Is your health a top priority for you? If so, you’re probably well aware of the healthy habits you need to incorporate into your routine to live a long life. But did you know that placing a focus on preventative health care is equally important?
Preventative health care strategies have been introduced into our daily lives to keep us as healthy and disease free as possible. This may in part be due to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) reporting that largely preventable chronic conditions cause almost 75% of the deaths recorded across the U.S. each year. But there’s another reason to consider health promotion as an important step: it can help reduce health care costs and our own budgets! With illnesses such as obesity, high blood pressure, and asthma is particularly costly to the economy in terms of lost workdays, this topic should be considered a top priority. And while you may be able to make course corrections on your own, one of the most important relationships you can foster is with medical nurses.
Just think about it. The time you spend in a medical facility is mostly occupied by time spent with the nursing staff. And one of the most fundamental ways that nurses assist in patient care efforts is through education. Nurses are trained, educated, and qualified to talk to patients about many ranges of health-related topics including nutrition, exercise, and other forms of disease prevention like the importance of safe sex and refraining from excessive alcohol use. As an example of how a conversation may go, consider a patient visiting a medical practice for knee pain. During the intake, the nurse has the opportunity to discuss self-care strategies, such as weight management, as a way to minimize joint pain and discomfort.
One of the most important aspects of excellent health is obtaining information about strategies for better lifestyles. So, next time you’re in a medical facility, and a nurse offers some words of wisdom from her education, training, and own experience, they should not be dismissed as unimportant information.
