Nurses care for patients in a variety of ways. That care can take different forms; during any given shift, a nurse may perform various duties, including educating patients, treating injuries or illnesses, and helping them access additional treatment resources. A nurse’s preventive duties can be divided into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary care.
Primary Care
This level of preventive care is proactive; it’s also known as health promotion, and it involves providing patients with the information they need to manage and ultimately improve their health. By educating patients and providing them with this valuable information, nurses can help patients care for themselves as well as possible and avoid many health problems.
One of the best things about this level of preventive care is that it can happen in a variety of situations; it isn’t limited to a certain type of nurse-patient encounter. Nursing staff essentially can promote health information and wellness strategies whenever they meet patients, helping disseminate important health information in the wider community.
Secondary Care
While primary care can be more theoretical and more focused on education in general, secondary care is more specific to the patient. It involves analyzing high-risk factors and susceptibility to different diseases or conditions through screening to prevent their onset.
This is important at this juncture because preventive measures can lead to early diagnosis and prompt treatment, and it can also prevent more severe problems from developing. Examples include breast self-examination and screening for high blood pressure. With these conditions, early detection can make a big difference. With the help of a nurse, patients may be able to detect problems early and treat them effectively, which can be very important in the long run.
Tertiary Care
This is the third level of care, and it’s different in one important way: it involves the treatment of a disease or condition that has been diagnosed in a patient. Nurses help individuals create a care plan and make any modifications necessary to improve conditions. This is important because the nurses can help people manage the condition as much as possible, including minimizing further damage.
This level of care applies when the patient has been diagnosed with an incurable disease; the conditions may include a range of illnesses, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or cancer. Managing the disease as well as possible is important because it may prevent further deterioration. The diagnosis does not necessarily mean that the first two levels of care failed; the disease may not have been preventable, or it may have occurred in spite of the patient’s efforts to avert it.
Nurses Make a Difference
At 365 Healthcare Staffing Services, we specialize in the recruitment and placement of healthcare professionals in per diem, travel, and permanent assignments in healthcare facilities across the country. Nurses make a difference in patients’ lives every day; if you’re a nurse seeking a new assignment, we can help, and you can make a difference. Give us a call at 310.436.3650.
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- The primary level of prevention involves developing strategies to prevent risk factors and unhealthy behaviors.
- The secondary level involves identifying people who currently have risk factors for various diseases, such as heart disease or emphysema.
- The tertiary level involves managing illness and disease once it has occurred so that it does not deteriorate or become worse.
What does this mean in real life? Primary prevention could include teaching new parents about car seat safety or teaching patients about the dangers of tobacco use. In secondary prevention, nurses target diseases in the early stages because that’s when they’re most likely to be treated successfully. Tertiary prevention aims to restore self-sufficiency…[by limiting] the complications and disabilities associated with a disease state.
Helping patients help themselves
In many ways, preventive health care boils down to helping patients help themselves. Nurses can help patients work toward a healthy lifestyle, whether the problem is poor eating habits, tobacco or alcohol use or an aversion to exercise.
Nurses can remind patients that preventive health care must be planned and executed ahead of time, even when illness is absent. For the patient with poor eating habits, a nurse may recommend taking healthy lunches and snacks to work as an alternative to vending machines or fast food. A nurse may help a patient who struggles with alcohol or tobacco to find a support group or seek out positive ways to deal with cravings. For a patient who does not like exercise, a nurse might suggest finding fun activities that are active but don’t feel like a chore.
Accessing preventive services
Nurses can also help patients determine what’s available to them through their health insurance. Many people hesitate to go for tests or other screening or diagnostic services because they fear that the cost will be more than they can afford. However, the Affordable Care Act mandates all individual and group health plans offer a list of preventive care benefits with no cost-sharing requirements passed onto the consumer. There is a list of preventive services available at www.HealthCare.gov.
It’s important to note that, as with nearly every health insurance benefit, there are exceptions, or rather, words of warning. Patients may be billed for the visit, separately from [the] preventive services; that might include a co-pay. In addition, patients may have to pay out-of-pocket for treatments and follow-up appointments…if those screenings reveal a problem.
Preventive care is patient care
At 365 Healthcare Staffing Services, we specialize in the recruitment and placement of healthcare professionals in per diem, travel, and permanent assignments in healthcare facilities across the country. If you are committed to patient care and recognize the importance of preventive care, we’d like to talk with you. Give us a call at 310.436.3650 today.