Psychosocial Factors that Affect the Health Care Professional
Write a short (50-100-word) paragraph response for each question. This assignment is to be submitted as a Microsoft Word document.
Give examples of psychosocial factors that affect the health care professional and the effect those factors could have on patient education.
Give examples of psychosocial factors that affect the patient and the effect those factors could have on patient education.
Explain what is meant by personality styles and give examples of approaches that could be used to help the patient. Include self-perception as a factor.
List the steps in adjustment to illness and how the patient copes with each step.
Explain the health professional’s role in teaching the patient at different life stages.
Define the role of the family in patient education.
How might the family influence the compliance of the patient and what measures can the health care professional use in communication with the family?
Sample Paper
Psychosocial factors that affect the health care professional and the effect those factors could have on patient education
Psychosocial factors that affect those in the health care field of profession are marriage status, social integration, social support, and social status. Marriage status affects patient education since single parents might have challenges meeting their obligations at home, affecting how they teach patient education compared to those who are together. Without providing enough social support to those in the health care profession, they might become overwhelmed trying to balance between their social lives and providing patients’ education (Goetz et al., 2018). Being unemployed denies one access to get health insurance covers and medical services, making health education challenging to access. Some social disruptions like divorce among health care spouses can negatively affect how a healthcare professional gives patient education. The death of a family member in the healthcare profession might negatively affect how he or she provides patient education since providing patient education might be challenging due to grief (Goetz et al., 2018).
Psychosocial factors that affect the patient and the effect those factors could have on patient education
These psychosocial factors that affect the patient education include marriage status, unemployment, social disruptions, and social support network. Single parent patients might lack enough funds to access better patient education since most of their earnings go to providing for the family compared to couple or married parents who get financial and moral support from their spouses. Unemployed leaves the patient unable to access patient education due to lack of money. Social disruptions like divorce might affect a patient’s education since divorcing is expensive, hindering the patient from accessing patient education due to financial difficulties (Goetz et al., 2018). Inadequate social support reduces patient education due to a lack of moral support from family members or inadequate finances when a patient becomes sick.
Explain what is meant by personality styles and give examples of approaches that could be used to help the patient
Personality styles refer to the traits that reflect the characteristics patterns of the patient’s thoughts, behavior, and emotions. For example, while other patients might see a health care professional as his savior, showing them they are content and happy, others might show reaction traits of fear, aggression, or anger towards the health caregiver. One’s self-perception of themselves and their illness also contributes to patient personality styles. Patients are affected by their life choices, behaviors, or habits that have led to their illness, such as substance abuse or tobacco smoking (Redelmeier et al., 2021). Some patients would never go to the hospital believing they will get well with time, while others fear going to the hospital.
Steps in adjustment to illness and how the patient copes with each step.
The first step is denial. Patients who experience denial refuse to seek medical help believing the illness would not hurt them. They stay in their sick condition until they get better or hope they will get better. Fear is the second step. Patients in this stage are scared of dying from the disease or not fully recovering from their sickness. They might be experiencing fear from what they read about their illness or seeing someone dying from the same illness as them (Lam, 2019). Fear may cause some patients to get depressed or avoid people due to fear of stigmatizing. The third step is grief. Patients in the grief stage have put their plans or daily activities on hold due to being sick, and this may cause the patient to have grief feelings because of losses to their business while sick or missed deadlines that were important (Lam, 2019). The patient may show this trait by lamenting or though signs of regret. Iv. Anger-patient who show these traits may feel that they do not deserve to be among the percentage of patients who have the disease. The patient may become very aggressive towards others by letting out his or her frustration on others. The last step is acceptance. Patients eventually come to terms with their condition and seek medication to better their well-being (Lam, 2019).
Explain the health professional’s role in teaching the patient at different life stages
The different life stages are the toddler (1 to 2 years), childhood (2 to 4 years), adolescence, midlife and old age. For toddler patients, health care professionals should incorporate teaching parents that some things do not go away by including the experiences of their parent’s childhood in their teachings. For 2 to 4 year-old children patients, the health care professional should help educate parents and child caregivers on the child’s needs and what they should avoid, like restraining the child, which is not suitable for the child at that stage. For adolescents, health care profession should teach parents to trust their children even when they are unsupervised (Pearson, 2018). Parents should only involve themselves when it is necessary and unavoidable. They should also teach them the importance of a healthy living lifestyle which may help them in future such as eating healthy food diet and exercising. For the midlife stage patients, health care profession should teach ways to keep a healthy lifestyle to maintain good health since most patients are very concerned about their health at this stage in life (Pearson, 2018). At old age-the, the health care professional can teach the patients how to maintain their health to avoid unnecessary sickness since the patient has a higher chance of becoming sick due to old age.
Define the role of the family in patient education
The family has various roles to play in patient education by providing support to the patient in different ways. Family members can provide emotional support to a family patient since they might be experiencing stress due to their illness. Family members must encourage their patients to seek or comply with their treatment (Pearson, 2018). They can help set up reminders on when the patient should take their medicating. Family members can help give medication to the underage family patient who might not yet understand how to read the instructions or are too sick to take the medication themselves. Family members should provide financial support to patients who cannot pay for their treatment due to financial difficulties (Pearson, 2018). They can provide the family patient with the necessary resources to make better medical decisions. Family members should encourage patients to be positive they will get better and try to entertain them so that the patient does not give up and give in to his negative traits so anger or fear of not getting well.
How the family influence the compliance of the patient and what measures can the health care professional use in communication with the family
The family can influence the patient compliance by providing the necessary resource that the patient needs when he is sick. The family can also give the health care professional feedback on the patient’s conditions (Anderson, 2019). The family can set up a medication schedule and reminder for the patient through the health care professional’s advice. The health care professionals can help the family decide the best medical treatment for the patient and advice how best to monitor the patient’s condition and complications that might come up during his treatment (Anderson, 2019). The health care professional should follow up on the patient’s psychosocial aspect that might affect the patient’s recovery.
References
Anderson, H. (2019). Strategies for enhancing patient compliance. Patient Counselling and Health Education, 3(2), 83. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0738-3991(81)80064-x
Goetz, K., Berger, S., Gavartina, A., Zaroti, S., & Szecsenyi, J. (2018). How psychosocial factors affect the well-being of practice assistants at work in general medical care? – a questionnaire survey. BMC Family Practice, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-015-0366-y
Redelmeier, D. A., Najeeb, U., & Etchells, E. E. (2021). Understanding patient personality in medical care: Five-factor model. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 36(7), 2111-2114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-021-06598-8
