Disease Prevention

I'm trying really hard to read before class this semester. I'm a slow reader, and I get frustrated easily by it. Probably not the best plan to not read because of that, but it is what it is.

But today, I was getting some reading done for my Community class (which is tomorrow...insert pats on the back here for being proactive) and came across a story that I truly feel defines the way I want to practice nursing. I've been saying this for a long time now about being preventative rather than reactive regarding health. The story is this:

I am standing by the shore of a swiftly flowing river and hear the cry of a drowning man. I jump into the cold waters. I fight against the strong current and force my way to the struggling man. I hold on hard and gradually pull him to shore. I lay him out on the bank and revive him with artificial respiration. Just when he begins to breathe, I hear another cry for help. I jump into the cold waters. I fight against the strong current, and swim forcefully to the struggling woman. I grab hold and gradually pull her to shore. I lift her out onto the bank beside the man and work to revive her with artificial respiration. Just when she begins to breathe, I hear another cry for help. I jump into the cold waters. Fighting again against the strong current, I force my way to the struggling man. I am getting tired, so with great effort I eventually pull him to shore. I lay him out on the bank and try to revive him with artificial respiration. Just when he begins to breathe, I hear another cry for help. Near exhaustion, it occurs to me that I'm so busy jumping in, pulling them to shore, applying artificial respiration that I have no time to see who is upstream pushing them all in.... (Adapted from a story told by Irving Zola as cited in McKinlay JB: A case for refocusing upstream: the political economy of illness. In Conrad P, The sociology of health and illness: critical perspectives, New York, 2008, Macmillan, pp. 578-591.)

The title of that section in the book is called Thinking Upstream: Examining the Root Causes of Poor Health. It's hard to focus on the problems causing poor health/unhealthiness when medical staff and their resources are consistently just trying to catch up. More education to patients is needed to to prevent poor health because it gets to a point where it has to be labeled as "poor". Tons of economical, social, and environmental factors play into it, so it's not an easy fix. But I feel like it's the direction we should be headed in as far as thinking about it and making plans to combat it.

In this same chapter, I was reading about a theory that basically says, the point of nursing is to care for people who can't care for themselves. People care for themselves on a daily basis. And when they have a self-care deficit, that's when the nurse comes in. Education about better self-care would, in theory, all people to have the tools and the knowledge to better care for themselves and not need/need less medical attention. In theory...

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I want my own nursing practice to be based on the idea of primary prevention rather than secondary or tertiary prevention, and I'm going to make every effort for it to be that way.

So...I leave you with this. Whether it's exercise, eating right/better, making a doctor's appointment, or taking time for yourself mentally, what have you done to stay healthy today?