Chronic diseases that affect family members
Several factors usually impact family members. These impacts are normally contributed by chronic diseases that affect family members and they include emotional functioning, interpersonal relationships, and disruption of leisure, only to mention a few. These factors usually affect the family negatively especially when the patient is suffering from advanced stages of chronic diseases. These impacts normally pose challenges to the healthcare system and also care distribution in general.
Personally, the factor that I feel it most affects the families is the financial factor. Lack of adequate finances is usually the greatest burden to family members with a patient suffering from chronic diseases. The financial burden includes the appointment, transport, and treatment cost that are indeed expensive for the families to afford.
From the reading, a Canadian study revealed that families can use up to an average of C$624 in a single month to care for the patients suffering from an intellectual disability. This amount of money is indeed too much making the families strain financially. Financial strain among the family members usually leads to worry and stress. In order to support their suffering members of the family, the healthy members of the family have to increase their working hours to earn extra cost. Difficult in accessing funding especially by the less fortunate families increase stress and emotional effects.
There are various reasons for including a support person in planning care. The outstanding reason for including a support person is the fact that a support person normally has the role of supporting a loved one to heal by supporting them through constant communication and encouragement. The other reason as to why support person should be included in planning care is the fact that support persons contact the patient’s healthcare providers while the patient is at the hospital or even at home.
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Factors such as finance, family relationships, leisure, and social impact normally affect families especially with patients suffering from chronic infections. These factors pose a greater burden to healthcare and families while providing care to the patient. Also, chronic disease patients in families normally influence the family way of life in a variety of ways. For instance, the daily family routines are greatly affected because the ill family members require the availability of other family members to take care of them.
For me, the factor that I feel it most affects the families is the family relationship factor. Typically, family members experience negative effects on their relationship especially when a patient is suffering from a chronic disease in the family. As a result of patient illness, family members normally experience poor family relationships because they lack a greater understanding of how to emotionally support one another.
From the readings, Golic et al. found out that approximately 38 percent of the adolescents suffering from dermatological conditions had a feeling that their family relationship had been affected by their health condition. Also from the reading, family members with patients suffering from multiple sclerosis complications were reported to have negative effects on one other resulting in arguments and a lack of understanding of one’s feelings. To support patients suffering from chronic diseases, a stronger family relationship is recommended because a good family relationship ensures that the family members work together and help each other.
There exist some of the reasons as to why support persons should be included in planning for care. The main reason for including support person in a care plan is the fact that support persons emotionally support the patients to quickly recover from their complications. The other reason that makes support persons be included in planning care is the fact that they are emotionally connected to the patient which is crucial for the patient’s quick recovery.