Integrating Holistic and Scientific Healthcare

Definition of holistic care:

Holistic approach is the widely used healthcare approach in modern healthcare field, which means the wellbeing of the whole person (Hussey and Kennedy, 2016). The holistic healthcare approach emphasizes on providing compassionate and optimum care to a person by considering the spiritual, physical, emotional, psychological and social needs of that individual. As mentioned by Gorod et al. (2020), holistic healthcare approaches use the complementary medicine therapies together with the scientific healthcare method that deal with all the basic needs of a person which are important to be met for promoting positive health and wellbeing of the whole body.

Relevance of holistic care:

In modern healthcare industry, providing compassionate care to patients becomes highly challenging day by day due to the changing symptoms and nature of the diseases and complex health needs of people. As mentioned by Tazkarji et al. (2016), in order to promote positive physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing in service users, considering manifold health need by using modern healthcare techniques is not sufficient rather the health professionals need to use such integrated care approach that will assist health professionals to consider all types of basic needs and wellbeing of the service users. Holistic care framework enables modern healthcare organisations to not only enable health professionals to consider wide ranges of health and social determinants and health factors to provide best care delivery process but also develop such care framework that will promote patients’ empowerment and engagement for assisting them to live a healthy lifestyle (Birtwhistle et al. 2017). Holistic care approaches assist modern health practitioners to consider different aspects such as clients’ needs, preferences and values, patient’s family background, financial position, functional abilities, mental health and cognition, living standard of patients, support system, emotional and spiritual health issues and legal issues. Therefore, in modern health care industry, holistic care process is highly appropriate to the ever-changing health and social needs of services users. On the other hand, through using holistic healthcare approaches health professional are able to conduct continuous modification of overall care, treatment and medication system that will assist them to use innovative and modern healthcare techniques and methods to deal with changing pattern and symptoms of disease.

Different holistic approaches:

Preventive care approach:

Preventive care is one of the widely used holistic approaches which focuses on whole person and not on any particular condition of the individual. Three types of preventive care are there such as:

Primary prevention: protect people from exposure to disease

Secondary prevention: provide appropriate treatment to cure the health condition

Tertiary care: make proper rehabilitation of patients and provide them with proper menta and physical support

As mentioned by Jasemi et al. (2017), preventive care emphasizes on educating people by enhancing their health literacy about different health conditions, symptoms, reasons of disease and outcomes associated with each health condition, preventive care is highly useful holistic healthcare approaches that assist people to develop healthy habits, good lifestyles and effective practices that are crucial to obtain a healthy living standard. In preventive care framework, health professionals and nurse; provide health education to patients to improve their eating habits, sleeping pattern, food choices, daily routine and lifestyles (Wilson, 2017). Through conducting preventive care approach, health professionals can assist patients to avoid unhealthy habits such as consumption of alcohol, tobacco and narcotics. Additionally, preventive care is useful holistic care approach that assists nurse and health professionals to improve the decision-making, knowledge and personal skills of patients to enable them managing their social, physical and emotional needs and live a healthy life.

Person centred care:

Person centred care is the holistic care framework in which patients’ preference, dignity and values are placed at the centre of the heath care framework. As mentioned by Gorod et al. (2020), person centred care is highly preferred holistic approach used by modem health professional and nurses, in which patients are allowed to take part in decision-making of their care delivery process that enables health professionals and nurses to understand patients’ health needs, choice for treatment and decisions. For developing highly effective person-centred care health professional and nurses focus on the following elements:

Promotes positive health and wellbeing of patients

Enhances patients’ dignity

Empowers patients by improving their mental and physical wellbeing

Respect patient’s choice for treatment

Support patients’ independence, interest and decisions

Personalised and informed choice:

Personalised care is the holistic care approach that provides service users with the choice as well as control over their positive health and wellbeing that they expect in every next step of their live (N.H.S, 2019). There is no one-size-fits-all approach in healthcare as there are diverse health needs of people. Personalised care assists health professionals to determine ‘What Matters’ to services users in terms of providing the relevant and compassionate care to meet all their health needs. Informed consent is important ethical aspect in personalised care approach in which health professionals and nurses take voluntary consent from patients before starting any treatment and care process (Stein et al. 2016). Based on the varying needs of patients, health professionals need to conduct relevant treatment framework and clinical setting for each patient. Informed consent assures that patients and their family members are informed about purpose, objectives, outcomes and associated risk of the treatment process that are going to be implemented. On the other hand, through informed consent health professionals ensure that during the personalised care process, patients’ dignity, interest and preferences will be respected accordingly.

Engagement and empowerment of individuals, communities and families:

Empowerment of services users at the individual and community level is important holistic approach that modern health professionals use to promote positive health and wellbeing of the entire community (Ventegodt et al. 2016). Through conducting health literacy program, health education and self-management training process, health professionals are able to engage and involved services users in improving their health and wellbeing. On the other hand, through conducting health literacy campaign, disease prevention program and health awareness campaign, Health Service Executives [HSE] can improve the knowledge of the entire community regarding healthy habits and lifestyles to stay healthy and fit.

Forming well skilled and qualified workforce:

Holistic approach is not only associated with providing optimum and compassionate care to services users to improve the physical, emotional and spiritual health and wellbeing, but is associated with modifying the overall care delivery process by enhancing knowledge and skill of health professionals as well as health staffs (Members et al. 2020). In order to deal with ever changing health needs of patients, health professional needs to improve the work process of overall healthcare team which is only possible by improving professional skill and expertise of the team members. Through self-assessment, training program, skill development program, health professionals can improve their professional standard that will assist them to bring about innovative care strategies that will assist the healthcare team to provide best care to service users.

Tackling health inequalities in local context:

Different holistic approaches can be used to tackle the local health inequalities:

Promoting health awareness and wellbeing in patients

Improving community perspectives regarding disease prevention and healthy habits

Improving food choice, sleeping pattern, eating habits and lifestyle of service users at individual and community level

Promoting physical exercise, meditation and yoga

Develop and lead a strategy for health promotion in community and healthcare setting:

Following strategies will be implemented for health promotion in community:

Planning for health promotion:

This is the first step of any health promotion framework. In this step the organisers of this health promotion campaign will make a clear plan based which the entre process of health promotion will be conducted.

Strategies direction:

The entre team involved in health promotion will be directed to promote health awareness and health literacy in community to develop healthy habits and lifestyles in terms of reducing their vulnerability to chronic disease.

Aims:

To promote positive health and wellbeing in community

Health promotion objectives:

Here the health promotion objectives of this campaign are as follows:

Develop improved clinical intervention

Improve the heath literacy in community

Develop skill of self-management and disease prevention skill in community people

Promote positive thoughts, decision making and wellbeing in community

Develop confidence, cognition and spiritual health in people

Ethical consideration:

Here organisers of this health promotion program will ensure that they have maintained moral reasoning, personal interest, confidentiality, autonomy of services users, patient’s dignity and respect.

Resources management:

In this stage, organisers will determine the resources that are needed to achieve the desired goals of this health promotion program. Here the resources that are going to be used for the health promotion program are as follows:

Budget management:

Here the organisers of this campaign will determine the cost of individual resource and thereby calculate the estimated cost to conduct the entire campaign. The individual costs of each resource are as follows:

Reference list:

Birtwhistle, R., Bell, N.R., Thombs, B.D., Grad, R. and Dickinson, J.A., 2017. Periodic preventive health visits: a more appropriate approach to delivering preventive services: From the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care. Canadian Family Physician, 63(11), p.824.

England, N.H.S., 2019. Universal personalised care: implementing the comprehensive model. London: NHS England.

Hussey, P.A. and Kennedy, M.A., 2016. Instantiating informatics in nursing practice for integrated patient centred holistic models of care: a discussion paper. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 72(5), pp.1030-1041.

Members, W.C., Wang, H., Zeng, T., Wu, X. and Sun, H., 2020. Holistic care for patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019: An expert consensus. International Journal of Nursing Sciences.

Stein, R.C., Dunn, J.A., Bartlett, J.M., Campbell, A.F., Marshall, A., Hall, P., Rooshenas, L., Morgan, A., Poole, C., Pinder, S.E. and Cameron, D.A., 2016. OPTIMA prelim: a randomised feasibility study of personalised care in the treatment of women with early breast cancer. Health technology assessment (Winchester, England), 20(10), p.1.

Ventegodt, S., Kandel, I., Ervin, D.A. and Merrick, J., 2016. Concepts of holistic care. In Health care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities across the lifespan (pp. 1935-1941). Springer, Cham.

Wilson, N., 2017. Holistic care should be coming your way. British Dental Journal, 223(8), pp.568-569.

Zumla, A., Ippolito, G., Ntoumi, F., Seyfert-Margolies, V., Nagu, T.J., Cirillo, D., Chakaya, J.M., Marais, B. and Maeurer, M., 2020. Host-directed therapies and holistic care for tuberculosis. Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 8(4), pp.337-340.