Research the health-illness continuum and its relevance to patient care. In a 850-1,000 word paper, discuss the relevance of the continuum to patient care and present a perspective of your current state of health in relation to the wellness spectrum. Include the following:

  1. Examine the health-illness continuum and discuss why this perspective is important to consider in relation to health and the human experience when caring for patients.
  2. Explain how understanding the health-illness continuum enables you, as a health care provider, to better promote the value and dignity of individuals or groups and to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing.
  3. Reflect on your overall state of health. Discuss what behaviors support or detract from your health and well-being. Explain where you currently fall on the health-illness continuum.
  4. Discuss the options and resources available to you to help you move toward wellness on the health-illness spectrum. Describe how these would assist in moving you toward wellness (managing a chronic disease, recovering from an illness, self-actualization, etc.).

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Health-illness continuum and its relevance to patient care

Introduction 

Swanson et al. (2019) define the health-illness continuum as the graphical representation of the well-being of patients. The concept of having a health-illness continuum was proposed by John Travis first in 1972 and is useful for the provision of a description of wellness of patients to ensure that it does not only mean the issue where one is not ill but is entailed with the cases such as the emotions and mental issues that one may have. The proposal of the graphical illustration of the well-being of patients is considered to be well in the instance that there is little information to help in discrediting the symptoms that are there. In this paper, there is a discussion on the health-illness continuum and its relevance to patient care.

Health-illness continuum and why this perspective is important to consider about health and the human experience when caring for patients  

In all instances, one must be able to have good health but with physical symptoms many people consider the person to be unwell although in the instance that one does not have symptoms there could be other concerns. Typically, the issue of concern is that patients may have health issues such as depression or issues of anxiety or one may be unhappy. This has an impact on the wellness of an individual and should be focused on at all times. The health wellness of an individual is different from one person to the other ad hence there is a varying definition of the wellness of an individual. There could be cases where there could be a consideration of wellness to be the opposite of illness but this is not the case for others….

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