A Delicate Balancing Act

Nursing care, and nurses as a whole, are expected to take care of sick people. And then when they get sick again, to care for them again. In the 1960’s, a few decades ago, I graduated from nursing school. Nurses heard the words ‘preventive health care’. And nurses still do hear those words. In that distant past of the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and even 1990’s, nurses talked about and worked on plans and programs for the education of patients - sick people weren’t yet called clients - so that these patients either didn’t have to get sick again and come back to hospital, or so that they knew how to manage the care needed to live with a chronic condition - or a cast or a jaw wired shut. Many nurses, and their patients, really thought this was a good idea and thought maybe this sort of education would save health care, and thus taxpayer, dollars.

In all those decades, and maybe earlier and sometimes still later, the number crunchers and purse string holders said that this would be too expensive. This was when hospital stays were being shortened, because they were too costly, and psychiatric hospitals were being emptied, because……they were too costly. Today's health care budgets are continually strained and bursting at the seams. Preventive health care is being talked about a little differently now, with more community health care teams activated, at least here in Victoria, and I'm certain in other health care systems. There is still a long way to go for many to access supportive therapies like massage, acupuncture and water therapies to name a few. As technology increases, our biological human bodies still need the human touch, and we also must manage the budget effectively. Health teaching is the education that our patients, or our clients require when in hospital for moving forward with preventive personal health care. Will budgets be affected on the balance or debit side? And whose budget? A health care system or the individuals cared for within the system?

“Every truth in this world stretched beyond 

it's limits will become a false doctrine.”

~ K.P. Yohannan, 

Living in the Light of Eternity