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Chronic health conditions
Published in Jackie Musgrave, Health and Wellbeing for Babies and Children, 2022
Working with children who were experiencing health problems gave me insight into the impact on their families of having a child with an ongoing medical condition. Parents often had a range of difficulties to face; disturbed nights because of needing to attend to dialysis machines that were mal-functioning; missed days at work, or the inability to be in employment which led to reduced income and a loss of freedom and spontaneity because of the restrictions placed upon them by their child's condition. I saw many families come to breaking point because of the pressures caused by the added layer of complexity as a result of their child's health condition. I became aware that one of the pressures that some parents faced was because they were experts in their child's care and consequently had to be the source of information and knowledge about the management of the condition. In particular, parents of children with complex medical needs frequently became exhausted at having to repeat information to a range of different professionals.
Organisational culture in health and social care
Published in Janet Thomas, Understanding and Supporting Professional Carers, 2021
Sometimes change results in an increase in workload that takes place gradually over a period of years and remains unnoticed until, in response to a seemingly trivial event, breaking point is reached. Alternatively, repeated cycles of change may occur until staff eventually lose their resilience and can no longer keep going, so they become exhausted. The effect is often that one person becomes the symptom carrier for the system, is no longer able to cope and is forced to take time off work.
Conclusion
Published in David B. Friend, HealthCare.com, 2020
I have attempted to describe some of the challenges and opportunities that will be bearing down on us with regard to providing health care in the U.S. and around the world. Clearly, over the next several decades, an aging population will have a great impact on the demand for health care around the world. The number of people over age 85 is expected to grow from 3 million today to 20 million in the U.S. by 2020. Unless medical knowledge advances, almost half of that population, or nearly 10 million Americans, can expect to be suffering from some form of dementia. The stress and strain on the health care system to provide the needed care for this group alone will be enormous. Further, medical science continues to convert acute, relatively inexpensive, life-ending illnesses into chronic, long-term and expensive conditions. These advances will impact the lives of tens of millions. As a result, the financial capacity to pay for this care will be stretched to the breaking point.
How chronic pain changes a person’s life story in relation to participation in occupational roles: A narrative exploration
Published in Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 2022
P. Strub, T. Satink, B. E. Gantschnig
This leads us to the next finding of this study, persons diagnosed with CP could suffered psychological stress through the role expectancies place on them by society. Once they reached their individual breaking point, they experienced feeling of shame for their inability to meet the role expectations they set for themselves or those set by others. Additionally, they are confronted with a society that doesn’t understand or perceive CP as a disorder. Thus, society expects of them to continue in their usual occupational roles. This could hinder the process of creating an altered occupational identity as society might oppose this change. Stigmatization towards CP is still common among health professionals, friends, family, and the community [26]. Western society still inherently and actively adopts certain expectations towards participation in occupational roles and what ‘normality’ should entail [27,28]. All too often, people with CP do not fit into this picture of normality. By imposing this role expectancy on people with CP, we willingly put immense stress on them. As health practitioners we should therefore take this debilitating aspect of CP into account and try to enhance our understanding of the transition process involved in creating an altered occupational identity for oneself. This insight would equip us to better assist our clients on their journey to accept their pain as part of their new self. In addition, we should not only do our best to be cognizant of the effects of the alteration of one’s occupational identity, but to also consider the associated role expectancies of these identities in society.
Resilience: Cultural Values and Support Resources
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2022
The data from the three studies noted above establish that African American women feel an obligation to manifest strength and to suppress their emotions, also called masking or self-silencing. It questions the notion that African American women are more resilient because of a lifetime of experiencing and handling adversity. Countering the proposal that resilience is built through repeated experiences of handling adverse events successfully throughout the life span, Konnikova (2015) asserts that the answer to the capacity for resilience cannot be explained entirely by experience and the passage of time. More important is which side of the equation—the resilience or the adverse events—carries more weight. The stressors can become so intense that resilience is overwhelmed. Or stressors may be so continuous and constant that resilience is pushed to its limit (Garcia, 2021). Garcia relates the stories of nurses and other health care workers during the pandemic who suffered emotional and physical exhaustion, trouble sleeping, and work-related dread. Most people, in short, have a breaking point and do not have unlimited capacity to endure stress (Garcia, 2021; Konnikova, 2015). The question then becomes can something be done to enhance the capacity for resilience?
The Swedish national guidelines on prostate cancer, part 2: recurrent, metastatic and castration resistant disease
Published in Scandinavian Journal of Urology, 2022
Ola Bratt, Stefan Carlsson, Per Fransson, Jon Kindblom, Johan Stranne, Camilla Thellenberg Karlsson
A central oncological principle is to stop cancer treatment when it is no longer benefitting the patient. It is, however, often difficult to know when this breaking point is reached for an individual patient. With the exception of castration treatment, stopping the ongoing treatment for mCRPC is recommended if two or more of the following criteria are present: deterioration of performance status, increased or new cancer-related symptoms, biochemical progress and radiological progress. The Swedish guidelines stress that treatment should not be stopped because of biochemical progression only (PSA, ALP or other biomarkers). This is particularly important the first few months of treatment, as rising PSA and ALP values may be a flare phenomenon associated with cancer cell death or normal tissue regeneration [31,32].