ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE - NURSING

Explore and Analyze the Role of the Adult Nurse in an Inter-professional Context in the Health Promotion and Prevention of Disease. Examine Contemporary Political and Social Influences that Impact on their Health.

Explore and Analyze the Role of the Adult Nurse in an Inter-professional Context in the Health Promotion and Prevention of Disease. Examine Contemporary Political and Social Influences that Impact on their Health.

Introduction

The role of an adult nurse is not only to look after the unwell; in fact nurses actually help in promoting overall health and preventing diseases: from assisting young adults fight obesity and eating disorders, by training them how to make healthy foods, to supporting programs that help in providing care to seniors at home, to assisting individuals who smoke through the critical phases of smoking cessation, nurses play a significant and crucial role in health promotion and disease prevention (Buchan & Lynn, 2004, p.23).

Discussion

Coronary heart disease or CHD in the United Kingdom is a very common issue. CHD causes more than 117,000 mortalities each year in the UK: just about 1 in 6 deaths in females and 1 in 5 deaths in males. While the death rates from coronary heart disease have been declining speedily in the United Kingdom since the end of 1970s, still they are amongst the highest in Europe (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk). There is substantial variation in the mortality rates from coronary heart disease in the United Kingdom: fatality rates are much elevated in Scotland as compare to the south of England and this is distinctive of both sexes and all age groups. Moreover, the rates of death are much elevated in blue-collar workers as compare to the white-collar workers and are predominantly much higher among Pakistani and Indian men in UK (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk).

Naturally, the load of morbidity from this illness is also extremely sky-scraping. There are projected to be approximately 1.5 million males living in the United Kingdom who havecoronary heart disease (either myocardial infarction or angina), and nearly 1.1 million females. Information and details from the health survey for Britain for the year 2003 suggest the occurrence of coronary heart disease in Britain is approximately 4.5 percent in women and 7.4 percent in men. The rates of prevalence rise with age in order that just about one in five women and one in four men aged seventy five and above are living with coronary heart disease. Collective data from QOF that is Quality and Outcomes Framework returns propose that 3.6 percent of all general practice registrations in the United Kingdom are recognized to have some kind of CHD. The financial load of this ailment is huge: projected costs to the UK economy are 7.9 billion Euros per year, of which forty five percent is occupied by healthcare expenses, 16 percent in informal care expenses and forty percent in loss of productivity (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk).

The Roles of the Patient, Carer and the Healthcare Professional in Disease Prevention

The declaration of contemporary health care is that it is based on the condition of being patient centred (Haber, 2003, ...