MEDICINE

Issues in Healthcare for Intellectually Disabled

Issues in Healthcare for Intellectually Disabled

Article 1

The general practice care of people with intellectual disability: barriers and solutions

Introduction

The first article discusses the issue of general practice adopted by nurses when caring for patients suffering from intellectual disability. The authors, Lennox, Diggens and Ugoni, shed light on the barriers and challenges faced by practitioners. The study also seeks to provide solutions to the issues encountered during practice.

General practitioners have largely been entrusted with the responsibility of providing basic health care service to patients with intellectual disability. This shift in responsibility was a result of a change in preference in terms of method of care to community-based from institutional care. As is the case with virtually all forms of approach in healthcare, there occurred a number of limitations to the effective implementation of the community-based approach. Some studies report that several patients with intellectual disability experienced ill-managed conditions during treatment. Researchers also revealed that that exist a lack of appropriate screen methods and prevention techniques. These studies have discovered an array of barriers and limitations, of which the most common are gaps in communication between practitioners and patients, miscommunication among health care professionals, obstacles restricting access to healthcare facilities and services, inadequate compensation and less time allocated to understand the history of patients (Lennox et al. 1997, 390).

General practitioners have also been known to hold negative perceptions that can adversely impact the quality of health care service being provided. Another issue that has come to the fore is that general practitioners have been witnessed to be short-sighted regarding their responsibilities and roles being health care service providers for patients with intellectual disability. As a measure to counter these shortcomings, a number of strategic responses have been proposed. The most important is the provision of appropriate time to review a patient's history and compensation for practitioners to induce interest. The second strategy was to establish an effective connection between the agencies and practitioners. There is also the need to have an information system that would maintain a record of patients enrolled in care centers for intellectual disabilities. The system would also hold information over specialists that are available for referral in addition to the medical history of the patient. All these suggestions have been put forward keeping in mind the need for provision of better health care services, screening opportunities, promotion of healthcare, and rendering patient examinations. There have also been calls to analyze the training being provided currently and how can it be increased during education in order to develop a specialization in handling patients with intellectual disability.

Even though the barriers to provision of health care to patients with intellectual disability have been recognized, the solutions and propositions put forth by health care providers and general practitioners have largely been ignored. As is the case in the United Kingdom, in Australia general practitioners are also considered as the primary providers of health care. They are also the gate keepers to specialized services, with is believed to ...