Chronic Illness is an illness or disease that is long-term or permanent, as opposed to acute or terminal. Chronic Illness Management must be done on a day-to-day basis and can include everything from hypertension, to asthma, diabetes, depression and anxiety, to some forms of cancer, also, cerebral palsy, emphysema, endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, Celiac Disease, Parkinson’s and different forms of arthritis, etc. Some patients have a combination of several diseases simultaneously, which can make an already tense situation, feel unbearable.
Dealing with chronic illness management can cause considerable disability in individual lives and in order to cope and live a successful and less painful existence, it needs to be managed well.
Chronic diseases cause the individual, as well as their families and even society, a great deal of financial stress. They can lead to loss of employment and in a worse-case scenario, the loss of health coverage due to certain restrictions within policies, i.e., a preexisting condition clause.
In a lot of ways, it may seem considerably easier to deal with a life-threatening or acute disease, rather than a chronic illness. Some patients even become environmentally ill due to their disease being managed improperly. It is imperative that patient’s care givers and physicians, be highly educated about the illness they are treating so that they can give the best care possible. Moreover, they need to help their patient to be positive about their illness and teach them coping strategies so that depression does not overwhelm them and cause more harm.
Chronic Illness Management and Motivation
It is important that individuals who are chronically ill are encouraged and motivated to help themselves. In doing so, they can get the most out of life and remain as independent as possible, this gives them self-confidence and helps not to undermine the patient/caregiver relationship by setting healthy boundaries.
Our nurses and carers help to teach clients and families these strategies can help a client live a more independent life and maintain some sort of active lifestyle while maintaining chronic illness, while providing support and assistance when you require it.