What are your thoughts??
What are your thoughts??
The health and vitality of Americans are critical to the productivity and innovation essential for our nation’s future. Hence disease prevention is more important in everyday life. The National Prevention Strategy is a model for our nation to provide the most useful and attainable means for leading a healthy lifestyle. This broad plan includes four strategic directions that serve as the base for all prevention efforts. The National Prevention Strategy such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will change our nation’s health-care system to prevention and wellness rather than the treatment of sickness and disease. The main strategies to be followed to achieve this prevention and wellness plan are to provide Healthy and safe community environments by increasing the quality of our nation’s air, land, and water, to avoid exposure to environmental hazards. Similarly, increasing the clinical and community preventives services such as immunizations and cancer screenings will reduce subsequent health care costs. Also, people should be empowered to be responsible and informed to practice a healthy lifestyle such as healthy & nutritional foods, exercises, and establishing positive social interactions. Eliminating health disparities are also another important aspect so that a disproportionate burden of illness and disease can be avoided (Benjamin, 2011).
National Prevention Strategy has also identified some important priority areas to improve the health of the American people, particularly those who are disproportionately affected by disease and injury. These are tobacco-free living, preventing drug abuse and excessive alcohol use, healthy eating active living, injury- and violence-free living, reproductive and sexual health and, mental and emotional well-being (Benjamin, 2011).
Everyone will interact with a nurse at some point in their lives. Nurses are high-level thinkers with exceptional skills and considerable ability to communicate, negotiate, coordinate, and collaborate in order to deliver care (Sullivan, 2004). When nurses are working within a health promotion model, every interaction with a client can be an educational intervention (Rankin 2005). For example, while changing the dressing of a diabetic foot ulcer, nurses get the opportunity to educate the requirement of regular blood sugar testing and diabetic control. When a patient comes to a clinic or doctor’s office, with a cut, it’s the perfect time to check the chart for the last tetanus booster. Similarly, during a home visit to discuss newborn care, it is the perfect opportunity for the nurse to discuss the childhood vaccine schedule, recommended vitamin supplements, or even the developmental milestones of an older sibling. This way, nurses are practicing health promotion strategies constantly (Jones, 2015).
