HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

Principles of Health and Social Care Practice

Principles of Health and Social Care Practice

Introduction

The governments and departments of health in various countries establish clearly defined principles in order to help the nurses and care takers. The health care professionals are significantly helped by such principles, as they become able to provide assistance to individuals in staying healthy and living independently. This paper discusses the ways in which the principles of health and social care practices are implemented, the impact of policies and legislations on these principles and the major theories that underpin these principles. In addition, the paper also suggests that how can a nurse develop own policy for contributing to the development and implementation of health and social care organizational policy.

1.Implementing Principles of Support in Health and Social Care Practice

The core objective of implementing the support principles in healthcare framework is to ensure empowerment, independence, social inclusion and respect of diversity for the people including patients, clients and colleagues (Waine, et.al, 2005, pp.7). With the implementation of support principles, the health care professionals become able to collaborate with each other and make the service users more independent and healthy. This section describes how the support principles are applied, in order to provide quality services to the users.

1.1Applying Principles of Support for Ensuring Individual Care

One of the major support principles is to make the patients empowered and responsible. To apply this rule to health and social care framework, the carers, patients and service users are well informed by their current situations, any medications or actions planned for them (Nursing Times, 2012). In this way, people become able to cope up with their difficulties and make the most of what abilities or skills they have. The control would be partially shifted from the experienced health care workers to the patients, thus they can help the caretaker in development of plan according to their needs. For this principle, the healthcare staff should develop the concepts of self care in patients; they should respect patient's rights, privacy and dignity.

Effective communication is essential for implementing the support principles. The communication helps both the carer and the patients in assessing the patient's medical condition and improvements. Thus, the patients and caretakers can collaborate to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the patients and find solutions to overcome these. Also, the patients become more confident as they can discuss all their concerns and issues openly with the caretaker. The discussions develop a sense of empowerment and responsibility in the patient, and results in making treatment more effective, in comparison to the situation where complete power is hold by the care taker.

The caretakers should provide accurate and evidence based information to the patients. They should encourage the patients or service users to access the relevant information. To improve the independence and self care practices of patients, the care takers should provide them with necessary trainings. These training should intend to develop the self care skills of the patients; the care takers ...