Quality of Life and Healthcare Providers
Quality of life is a term used very frequently these days as we emerge from the pandemic yet remain in a global crisis of environmental and manmade fears.
What is it? Quality of Life is the standard of health, comfort, and happiness experienced by an individual or group.
Generally, it is perceived differently for most people or groups of people. In Ukraine, QoL would improve with the end of the war. In regions other regions of the world, it may be to have running water and less disease. From an individual perspective, it may as simple as not having headaches or back pain.
Whatever one’s perception of improved quality of life is, there are hopefully small steps people can take to make each day a little better in the wake of daily catastrophe or more personally, chronic pain.
For a closer focus at QoL and pain, there are key factors that can facilitate or disrupt daily joy, productivity and personal satisfaction. There is a bountiful amount of research that discusses the importance of sleep regarding most aspects of health broadly including mental and physical well-being. For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34147026/
Still the unavoidable attacks on QoL that are common with severe diagnoses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and other forms of autoimmune disease, may be combatted with simple non-pharmaceutical approaches.
Conventional medicine and Big Pharma would prefer a person take a pain pill and fight the side effects of the prescription with another pill. This ludicrous notion can spiral a person’s health into an abyss of never-ending pill popping.
It remains fascinating that holistic approaches to health are the oldest form of medicine for time immemorial while simultaneously being shunned and deferred away from by countless conventional medical providers.
The root cause of western medicine being the primary pathway for health is certainly a profit driven model that has QoL way down on the priority list of mission, vision and values. This statement is backed up by lots of research. Here are a couple cites that confirm this notion: https://academic.oup.com/jlb/article/7/1/lsaa060/5882039
From the perspective of this blog, quality of life is directly and proportionally related to interactions and communications with others from foundation of authentic caring and kindness. Additionally, with healthcare at the center of so many forums and debates, providers that take time to listen, provide eye contact and actually use their hands to touch the places where patients complain of pain are the providers that practice patient-centered-care. These are the providers that drive toward improving patient quality of life.
In closing, when one questions if they are not being treated with dignity and respect, if they’re cultures, values and beliefs are disregarded, if information about their health is not being openely shared, if they are not encouraged to take part in the healing process….it is time to find another provider that is a genuine healer that cares.
