The healthcare system has been designed in such a way that in most cases, care provision is supposed to be carried out in the hospitals then patients discharged to have post medical care at their homes if the conditions that they may have been treated of are not severe. In most cases, the individuals who are mandated with taking care of such patients are the nurses (Baumann, & Dang, 2012). However, due to some factors like finances or otherwise, most patients are usually released to go home and receive their post-treatment care at home. Such a situation may pose some challenges to the patients that have been discharged. Such conditions are usually referred to the barriers to self-care. Examples of such barriers include factors like financial and physical constraints to access to care, deficits as far as the required knowledge for care is concerned, emotional challenges, personal struggles and challenges associated with lifestyle changes. Co-morbidities connected with particular diseases are also classified as sources of barriers to self-care (Baumann, & Dang, 2012).’
A particular disease that requires one to have knowledge on self-care is ostomy surgery. This type of surgery is usually performed on individuals that have got particular diseases like carcinomas of the bladder, bowel and on the female reproductive system. They may also be performed on individuals with Crohn’s disease and that having ulcerative colitis. However, there are challenges that are bound to affect an individual to whom this procedure will have been performed on. As such, the barriers to self-care associated with this condition include lack of adequate knowledge on how to care for self, physical challenges like the disabled, financial challenges, having to cope with new lifestyle challenges and emotional challenges (Krouse et al., 2016). As such, there is the need to have in place nursing strategies which will be crucial in addressing these problems. Nurses need to be on the forefront in healthcare promotion models like seminars and workshops to assist patients to cope with these barriers. Such educational models need to address factors like the need for financial empowerment, having strong emotional endurance, and on challenges to new lifestyle adaptations.
Nurses can assess the effectiveness of these strategies through fielding for questions from the patients, checking on the response of the patients on how effectively they will overcome the barriers and also demonstrations from the educated individuals. Such moves are aimed at reducing the levels of barriers to self-care in ostomy care (Prinz et al., 2015)
References
Baumann, L. C., & Dang, T. T. N. (2012). Helping patients with chronic conditions overcome barriers to self-care. The Nurse Practitioner, 37(3), 32-38.
Krouse, R. S., Grant, M., McCorkle, R., Wendel, C. S., Cobb, M. D., Tallman, N. J., & Hornbrook, M. C. (2016). A chronic care ostomy self‐management program for cancer survivors. Psycho‐Oncology.
Prinz, A., Colwell, J. C., Cross, H. H., Mantel, J., Perkins, J., & Walker, C. A. (2015). Discharge planning for a patient with a new ostomy: Best practice for clinicians. Journal of Wound Ostomy & Continence Nursing, 42(1), 79-82.
