Each week, Dr. Mauk shares thoughts relevant to Baby Boomers that are aimed to educate and amuse.
Guest Blog: Do You Know – How Patient Education Can Help Chronic Disease Management?
Healthcare facilities all around the world often face difficulty in treating patients with chronic diseases and look for ways to make it easy for patients to live with it. Chronic disease management by educating the patients either via online school or through regular sessions is known to an effective way of inculcating in them an awareness of how they can play part in coping with their health conditions. Patient education for chronic disease management helps in empowering them and taking actions that will enable them to achieve their health goals. Here is everything you need to know about educating patients for chronic disease management:
What Exactly is Chronic Disease Management?
Chronic disease management (CDA) is support and care to assist the patients having chronic diseases. It teaches them skills, gives them the knowledge and resources that they need to manage their daily life in a better way. This often includes regular visits from a family physician, other care providers, or referrals to specialized programs and services. The skills that are usually taught vary with diseases. Chronic diseases commonly include diabetes, asthma, chronic kidney disease, arthritis, depression, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
What are the Key Elements of Good Chronic Disease Management?
To be more effective, good chronic disease management should offer support and care that is proactive, team-based, and must be well integrated with the primary health care provider (e.g. your family physician, etc.). It must be easily accessible and should well-coordinated. It should be focused on adopting a healthy lifestyle and overall well being of the patient. CDM aims to encourage the patient to take care of themselves and involves family to encourage them to extend their support to their loved ones suffering from some serious health issues. It helps the patient to live a healthier and happier life by teaching them to cope up with their health condition.
How Patient’s Engagement and Education is Beneficial for the CDM?
Chronic disease management sessions are usually patient-centric. Since their aim is to enable patients to take care of themselves, the patient’s constant engagement is what makes it an absolute success. It is easy to keep the patient under observation as the healthcare provider can keep a constant check of what the patient is eating etc. or can control his routine. However, CDM does not have this privilege, rather their work is to train patients to follow a healthy lifestyle even in the absence of their healthcare provider. Patient’s knowledge and the urge to a better life is what helps them to live the disease but in a happier and healthier way.
When to Begin With the CDM?
Chronic disease management starts way before the patient is actually diagnosed with an illness. The primary health care provider, through regular checkups, encourages patients to take preventive healthcare measures by adopting healthy habits. Through such precautionary measures, the early onset of the disease can be mitigated.
What Do Patients Learn From CDM?
CDM helps the patient to differentiate between major and minor health-related issues and enables them to differentiate between both. For Example, if a person has a cardiovascular disease, through CDM he will be able to learn that what he should do in case of minor chest pain. Either he should instantly rush to the hospital or should talk to his healthcare provider on phone. Having knowledge of one’s health condition will enable them to make a better and timely decision and will save their money and time too.
Besides, knowing at what time you should be taking your medicine and what should you eat will make it easy for the people around you to extend their support, love, and care towards you. It will keep you going with your life, the way it is.
To Sum it Up!
You might have heard the cliché ‘where there is a will, there is a way’ and this how chronic disease management works. Involving the patient in their health care routine and talking and guiding them throughout the process is likely to give them a ray of hope. It is surely the best possible way of dealing with chronic disease. It just not eases their pain but also keeps them motivated to opt for a better and healthier lifestyle every day.
