Health Promotion
In today's lecture, Professor Flick discussed health promotion and health literacy. In this blog post, I am going to talk about two things I learned from this lecture. These include the three interventions we can use to reduce threats to health and an occupational therapist's role in health literacy.
The three interventions are categorized by primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention is when you try to prevent disease or injury before it occurs. Secondary prevention is when the disease or injury has already occurred, but you are working to reduce the impact and prevent it from getting worse. Tertiary prevention is when we try to reduce the impact of an ongoing disease or injury and improve the quality of life. Occupational therapist primarily use the secondary prevention when they are screening clients and tertiary prevention when treating a client. All three of these interventions can improve an individuals overall health and quality of life.
Health literacy is defined as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Professor Flick showed a video of individuals who weren't able to read and understand medical information. For example, they could not read the instructions on their own pill bottles and they could not read forms at the doctors office. The video stated that the majority of your clients leave appointments without understanding what they have been told. It is our job as an occupational therapist and health professional to fully communicate with our clients. They should have a full understand of who we are and what we are doing during every session. We have to be sensitive to their needs and adapt to help them understand. It is important that we build relationships with our clients so they are feel comfortable enough to tell us what they do and don't understand so we are able to provide assistance as needed.
The three interventions are categorized by primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention is when you try to prevent disease or injury before it occurs. Secondary prevention is when the disease or injury has already occurred, but you are working to reduce the impact and prevent it from getting worse. Tertiary prevention is when we try to reduce the impact of an ongoing disease or injury and improve the quality of life. Occupational therapist primarily use the secondary prevention when they are screening clients and tertiary prevention when treating a client. All three of these interventions can improve an individuals overall health and quality of life.
Health literacy is defined as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Professor Flick showed a video of individuals who weren't able to read and understand medical information. For example, they could not read the instructions on their own pill bottles and they could not read forms at the doctors office. The video stated that the majority of your clients leave appointments without understanding what they have been told. It is our job as an occupational therapist and health professional to fully communicate with our clients. They should have a full understand of who we are and what we are doing during every session. We have to be sensitive to their needs and adapt to help them understand. It is important that we build relationships with our clients so they are feel comfortable enough to tell us what they do and don't understand so we are able to provide assistance as needed.
Comments
Post a Comment