U.S Poverty and its impacts on patients

U.S Poverty and its impacts on patients

Introduction

Poverty is the lack of well-being by the people. It is the inability of people to purchase basic necessities of life. This includes food, shelter, education and clothing. Absolute poverty is a type of poverty associated with the lack of financial capability to afford basic necessities of life. In general, poor people often live below the standards of the society.(Chase,1997)

There are two terms of poverty absolute and relative. Absolute refers to the amount of basics that we need to survive and relative is the standards of living in a society at any particular time (Payne,2005). This essay aims to discuss the impact of poverty on community and social care, the influences it has on health across the lifespan, the relevance to nursing practice, services available to address the problem and local policies on poverty. it also deals with poverty and its impacts on individual patients.

Poverty is most prevalent in the unemployed, the youth, children, mothers, and the aged. Children borne out of poverty must struggle to reach the level of their counterparts from well off families. They struggle through their adulthood trying to make ends meet. Poverty is a social problem because the children borne in poor families are not given a fair opportunity to compete with the rest. There have been various measures of poverty that have been and are still in use although new measures of poverty are being advocated. The UNDP developed the human development index in 1990 to measure the level of poverty. This measures poverty based on the income. Globally, a measure that is used to measure poverty is the one developed and regularly updated by the World Bank; the $1per day. This measure is widely used although it doesn't show the real human wellbeing. That is why better methods that can capture the well being of humans are being advocated.(Payne,2005)

It is clear that if people do not have access to these essential requirements then they are without a doubt living in poverty. Some factors that influence health are outside a person's control. Take age for example, it is a fact of life that the older one gets, the more likely he or she is of getting sick as the body can't stay perfect forever. That being said a factor such as wealth also plays a huge role in the level of health that a society enjoys. It goes without saying that the relationship between poverty and health is a complex one. Many factors tie in with this, including poor diet, poor living conditions, lack of education, and limited access to medical assistance and also the stress caused as a result of living in poverty. (Orfield,2005)

Discussion

Impacts of Poverty on patients and health

People living in poverty have little or no income and as a result suffer severe distress trying to obtain the basic essentials in order to survive. One major factor to consider when discussing the effect of poverty on health is diet and the ...