Essay Sample on Holistic Health Teaching for Patients with Diabetes

Healthcare practitioners especially nurses have a responsibility of ensuring the provision of quality healthcare services to their patients. This can be achieved through the integration and adoption of evidence-based practices aimed at improving the healthcare outcome of the patients. Interventions targeting specific groups of patients that have been evaluated through research should be adopted to facilitate the improvement of healthcare services (Lorenzo, 2013). Holistic nursing involves caring of the body, mind and the soul of the patients. Florence Nightingale can be considered as the mother of holistic nursing. She dedicated her life to ensuring a comprehensive treatment of the patients. The essential aspect of all the healthcare professionals is to know how diseases can affect patients (Street et al. 2013). The idea of holistic nursing is based on the belief that nurses can assist and think about specific diseases that affect the patients due to their relationships, religion, spiritual emotions, mind and body. It also involves taking into consideration the cultural preferences, differences and the manner in which they can affect the wellbeing of the patients. Besides, this phenomenon consists of the caring of all the patients' parts. Since each patient is affected differently, holistic nurses provide the needed care to such patients in different ways. Holism nursing requires dedication. Nurses should balance their responsibilities thus permitting them to give the appropriate treatments to the patients effectively and efficiently. It is worth mentioning that nurses responsible for the provisions of holistic nursing need to integrate reflection, spirituality, self-responsibility, and self-care in the lives of their patients.

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The patient's self-care lessons are important especially when treating diabetic patients. Besides, the patients should be taught on the importance of adhering strictly to the medical monitoring of the changes in the blood glucose level and the importance of exercise in weight loss. Though it's hard to change individual behaviors and habits and often takes long, follow-up of the patient progress is important to determine the impact of education and health-care plans. This follows up is what I adhered to as part of the treatment of Mark Thomas.

Short-term goal: Ensuring the Patients Maintain the Needed Weight

As evidenced, Mark Thomas should maintain an appropriate weight. When visiting the progress of Mark Thomas, significant progress had been made on the physical development of the patient. The patient was able to determine the amount and types of physical activities required for his case. The patients demonstrated that he was aware of the dangers of gaining a lot of weight and the part reducing it played in the prevention enabling physical activities. The patient showed determination in adhering to the physical exercise as recommended. The patient was determined to see that he achieved his target weight loss of 2-3 pounds per week. The goal was achievable through the intervention of support groups. The groups helped him learn from brochure the best exercises both cool down and warm up with the helped of a trained nurse.

Long Term Goal: Management of Cholesterol Level

Though the body requires some amounts of cholesterol to function correctly, a person with diabetes like Mark Thomas needs to monitor his cholesterol levels regularly. A person with diabetes tends to have high amounts of cholesterol which affects his health (Lindstrom et al., 2013). Cholesterol prevents the cohesive working of the liver hence changing the body activities like the reduction of the glucose level in the blood.

Mark Thomas can control the high cholesterol levels by ensuring that he avoids food that has more substantial content of Trans and saturated fats. Also, Mark Thomas should make sure that he reduces unhealthy lifestyle habits like smoking and taking alcohol because they minimize HDL levels (American Diabetes Association, 2017).

Lastly, Mark Thomas should manage his diabetic condition by occasionally having his cholesterol levels checked in the hospital. In the health center, Mark Thomas will be provided with lipid profile which he can use to determine whether he has high or low cholesterol levels. Cholesterol levels can be high or low based on the health of the patient as well as feeding habits. Based on the outcome of the analysis, the doctor can help balance the cholesterol level through the provision of cholesterol balancing statin (American Diabetes Association, 2017). As a patient, Mark Thomas should set a long-term goal aimed toward the reduction of cholesterol levels. Regular exercises and practicing healthy eating habits are some of the methods Mark Thomas should adopt practices aiming towards the decline of the high cholesterol levels. It should be followed by a regular check-up of the cholesterol levels which will help make the patient achieve the long-term objectives of attaining a balanced cholesterol level.

In conclusion, following both long-term and short-term health checks and practice Mark Thomas will improve his health condition. He will be able to control the diabetic disease as well as achieve a healthy body. This will also be important in ensuring that there is a reduction of opportunistic infection as well and the proper functioning of the body.

Short-term goal: Monitoring and Maintaining Glucose Level

Maintaining the level of glucose in the patient's blood is the primary goal of managing diabetes. The level of glucose in the blood is maintained within a certain range. This is the reason why each diabetic patient is mandated to balance their activity, lifestyle and diabetes medicine (American Diabetes Association, 2015). Conversely, blood glucose monitoring will help the patient in understanding the relationship between blood glucose, food, exercise, and insulin. Also, patients get the opportunity to reduce problems and other complications which are associated with diabetes by controlling blood glucose (Rao et al. 2015). Mark Thomas had acquired necessary equipment within two months after educational meetings which were geared towards ensuring that he can monitor himself.

The educational meetings enabled him to monitor his blood sugar levels including the use of blood glucose meter, insulin syringes, a lancet device, and test strips. The patient was competent in using these devices accordingly. Additionally, the patient was responsible for interpreting the results obtained through the use of these devices. Therefore, he was able to inject himself depending on the observations. The patient could inject himself with insulin through proper utilization of the sliding scale (American Diabetes Association, 2015).

Conversely, according to the discussion between the registered nurse and the patient, the patient pointed out that he was provided with essential information through monitoring his blood glucose level (Rao et al. 2015). The critical information guided him to make concrete decisions regarding his short-term diabetes treatment. As a result of effective collaboration between the registered nurse and the patient, the goal was met, and the patient effectively monitored his of blood glucose level regularly.

Long-Term Goal: Maintaining Normal Cholesterol level

One of the patient's long-term goals includes managing cholesterol levels (Rao et al. 2015). Although Mark's body requires cholesterol to perform several functions, he has diabetes which makes him tend to have bad cholesterol. This condition also makes him have triglyceride and lower cholesterol which is good. The patient should avoid eating the diet that contains high saturation of trans fats because this can result in the production of more cholesterol in the patient's body.

The patient should avoid increased intake of refined sugars because it can lead to high blood sugar levels through increasing triglyceride levels (American Diabetes Association, 2015). The triglyceride levels can also be increased due to the high intake of alcohol. Besides, the patient should avoid smoking because it decreases high diabetic levels. The patient should make sure that his cholesterol levels are checked regularly. The patient was advised to ask his doctor to perform a lipid profile if his cholesterol levels have never been tested (Rao et al. 2015). The patient was also advised to seek medical advice more often especially if he knows that his cholesterol levels are high. The doctor should recommend the patient about taking a cholesterol-lowering statin to help in managing his cholesterol levels.

The educational meetings enabled Mark to set a long-term goal to lower his cholesterol levels by eating a heart-healthy diet (Rao et al. 2015). The patient was also required to do regular exercise to reduce his cholesterol levels. Once the patient numbers are stable, the patient will have them checked for at least once every year to ensure that his cholesterol levels are maintained (American Diabetes Association, 2015). This essential information guided him to make concrete decisions regarding his long-term diabetes treatment.

Evaluation and Promotion

Educating patients with diabetes is a crucial tool that aids the patients to self-manage their condition, the result has led to improved quality of life to these patients. Diabetic educators play a pivotal role in ensuring that the patients end up making an informed decision regarding their health and lifestyle. Through educating them, the mortality rate associated with the disease is considerably lowered. According to various research, diabetic patients who have undergone through educational programs are in an ideal position to control their cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose level.

Additionally, the same patients accrue minimum costs associated with their health as they follow prescriptions to the latter. Extensive research reflects on their frequent use of preventive services and primary care. In general, both the patients and their family members will have an easy time to take care of the needs of their loved ones because they will be aware of what to do and at what time.

Acquiring knowledge on their condition should be a top priority for people with diabetes and their families. Hence, there should be more knowledgeable individuals who have a great experience in the management of diabetes. Considering that most of the time these patients are usually far from the nearest medical health facility, they should be more conversant on how to handle any issue that may arise when the doctor is not there. Therefore, this education will go a long way in minimizing the likelihood of hospitalization and even loss of life. Families that have the appropriate knowledge on the management of diabetes have control over it contrary to other individuals who are still ignorant about this condition. The diabetic person should understand the causes, signs and symptoms and the corresponding treatment required. Education will arm the individual appropriately on the treatment of mild and severely low and high. Intervention measures should also be taken by the individual to remedy the situation. That is why it is important to educate the patients and other family members on the best care for diabetes.

References

American Diabetes Association. (2015). Standards of medical care in diabetes-2015 abridged for primary care providers. Clinical diabetes: a publication of the American Diabetes Association, 33(2), 97.

American Diabetes Association. (2017). 5. Prevention or delay of type 2 diabetes.Diabetes Care, 40(Supplement 1), S44-S47.

Rao, W. S., Shan, C. X., Zhang, W., Jiang, D. Z., & Qiu, M. (2015). A meta-analysis of short-term outcomes of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and BMI 35 kg/m2 undergoin...