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.

  1.  

Wellness and illness are dynamic processes. As the primary objective of medical personnel is to adjust wellness and illness for the individual patients, then it is not hard to accept that they (medical personnel) would closely monitor health status. This is important for helping to understand the unique aspects of each patient and ensuring that changes with implications for health care are well controlled. In fact, the objective of health care is to achieve high level wellness, and this objective is identified as being at the extreme end of the continuum, with illness and death being at the opposite end of the continuum. At the midline of the continuum is normal health, perceived as a neutral point with no discernible wellness or illness (Lubkin & Larsen, 2014). The health-illness continuum has implications for the treatment paradigm with the understanding that high level wellness and good health are preferable, normal health is not acceptable while illness and death are concerning. The level of treatment urgency increases as the individual patient shifts from normal health to illness and finally death. Successful medical intervention allows an individual to achieve normal health. However, achieving good health and high level wellness requires the active participation of each individual patient through adopting healthy behaviors such as eating healthy and exercising regularly (Wilson & Giddens, 2014).

Order this paper