With the rising prevalence of chronic disease, healthcare, and public health, societies are reviewing their responsibilities and exploring new avenues for more effective preventative and treatment therapies. Managing chronic illness is a method that entails screens, examinations, surveillance, and coordinating treatment together with patient education. History reveals that Chronic diseases affect the patient and the community, which has a significant weight on finances and healthcare utilization norms (Hernandez et al., 2019, p.1457). Therefore, many healthcare programs are working towards helping patients manage their condition and lead better lives.
Chronic diseases affect a large part of the population, and the conditions present in Ireland depict a need for proper management. In Ireland, there are now 1 million persons who suffer from chronic infections, including diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or cardiovascular disease. Three chronic diseases—cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and respiratory diseases—accounted for 75% of Ireland’s 27,123 fatalities in 2010 and are avoidable (Tandan et al.,1157, 2022). Besides, these illnesses caused 71% of early deaths in those under 65. Chronic disease’s existing and anticipated effects pose a significant challenge to the Irish community, its economy, and the health care system. Chronic care in present times in Ireland can best be described as unsustainable, inefficient, and ineffective. A large part of the population is dependent on hospitals to manage their chronic conditions, which sometimes face challenges such as delays in appointments and strain on resources. The HSE has created an Integrated Care Plan for the Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Disease to improve the situation.
Prevention of chronic diseases in Ireland
Chronic diseases that take away masses of people are largely preventable. Most factors that cause chronic diseases, including poor diet, alcoholism, and smoking tobacco, among others, are lifestyle choices that can be avoided. The lifestyle changes recommended to prevent chronic diseases include avoiding tobacco use, weight management, and engaging in physical activities (Barr et al., 2019). Besides, it is important to embrace a healthy diet. These techniques have effectively worked in countries committed to implementing preventive programs. For instance, the best community intervention programs are from Finland.
Interventions for preventing chronic diseases in the community
The most current WHO Strategy for Chronic Disease proposes that nations implement an integrated strategy that encourages population-level health improvement and prevention and customizes this with a targeted chronic illness management approach concentrating on people at high risk.
Implementation of policies for healthy living. The government can formulate and implement healthy living policies to prevent the avoidable causes of chronic diseases. Economic policies may significantly impact how people behave and make decisions, and they have been particularly effective in lowering the incidence of smoking. To reduce the use of tobacco and prevent heart diseases, the government increases taxes on the consumption of tobacco, bans any form of advertisement or promotion of tobacco, provides health warnings in public places against the consumption of tobacco, and restricts smoking zones. A similar intervention is applicable for the reduction of alcohol use.
Education. Ireland has a unique opportunity to deliver focused education in the field of chronic disease prevention and treatment, including health behavior modification and self-management assistance, given the significant number of medical grads from college and university entry-level programs. The education program should include People with a high risk of having a heart attack or a stroke, including those who have developed CVD, who should get counseling and multi-drug therapy (Wagner, 2019, 665). For instance, The goal of treating asthma is to manage the condition’s symptoms, regain full physical and psychosocial functionality, remove obstacles to social interactions and quality of life, and eradicate any associated side effects.
Moreover, the health sector could manage chronic disease through educational campaigns. Invest in creating locally relevant health messaging about food, exercise, and weight management. These campaigns are a guide to patients and caregivers when making daily decisions. The goal is to live well with the condition. During the Covid-19 pandemic, chronic illness patients depend on information from timely campaigns.
General nursing practice to manage chronic diseases.
Continuity of Care: Hospitals are, in their very nature, fragmented; each team or specialty in the health service only deals with one part of the patient’s care. Chronic illness management is a complicated process that includes self-care, primary care, acute care, and rehabilitation. It has been demonstrated that high levels of continuity of care lead to better patient outcomes, happier patients, and more favorable patient experiences (Plumb et al., 2021,435). Each patient should have a personalized illness management plan that includes their treatment objectives. Services should be patient-centered. All studies demonstrate that continuity of treatment has a significant favorable impact on health outcomes. This continuity of care can be provided by the Doctor and support staff.
Increasing capacity: A serious scarcity of general practitioners is evident in Ireland, and it is expected that this shortfall will worsen over time. Therefore, to manage chronic diseases, it is essential to increase GP training locations, allocation of more professional health practitioners, including physicians and nurses, and addition of diagnostics access by GPs. The management plan should thus state guidelines on the nature of tasks between specialty service providers and caregivers. Healthcare providers should ensure they attain chronic disease competency by training in pharmacology and clinical interventions.
Integrated Care Program For Chronic Diseases
Additionally, The Integrated Care Programme for Chronic Disease has been established by government policy (ICP CD). The program is focused on prevention, diagnosis in early stages, and management of chronic diseases. It seeks to help 700,00 persons suffering from diabetes, heart, and respiratory diseases. Patients with Type 2 diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or cardiovascular disease are the focus of Ireland’s CDM structured program (Tandan et al., 1157, 2022). It is operated under three subprograms, including the national diabetic Clinic, national heart, and national respiratory programs. Healthy eating begins at a tender age. The school feeding program should ensure food services are nutritious and balanced.
Self-management
Patients should be given the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to take control of their health, as well as the support they need to do so. Self-management is a method through which people take control of their chronic illnesses in the context of their daily life (Jiang & Cameron, 2020). It should be implemented by training and educating the patients about their health. Besides, patients under self-management programs require continuous support through the provision of digital solutions (Plumb et al., 2021,445). The objective of this approach is to improve patients’ health conditions as they live with the disease. This is because it trains a person to manage medications, symptoms, stress, and stay active.
Patient and caregivers management strategies
Patients and their caregivers learn to accept their condition and adopt coping strategies to survive. Most of them live with an optimistic mindset in hope for the future. They have developed the courage to consult with their physicians on an issue they experience daily. An individual may employ either constructive or destructive coping techniques to alter his or her psychological state or to lessen harmful effects when faced with a stressful event (Allegrante et al., 2019, 134). Nevertheless, some opted for medical insurance to reduce financial fatigue and made retirement plans. Social support is an important approach to the effective management of chronic diseases within society,
Challenges to chronic disease management
Ireland continues to face various barriers to the effective management of chronic disease among its population. The majority of hospital consultants cited a “lack of skills, education, and the knowledge gap” as a significant impediment to the management of chronic diseases. This slows the process of disease management. Likely, the majority of general practitioners, practice nurses, and hospital consultants all cited a lack of enough financing as one of the biggest obstacles, as well as difficulty in regularly accessing hospital consultants for guidance. Management of chronic diseases requires the use of specialized equipment, and the medication is also costly. Many healthcare facilities cannot afford machines to manage diseases effectively.
In conclusion, chronic disease management entails various initiatives. There are many reported cases of deaths due to chronic illnesses, including in Ireland. Ireland healthcare reports reveal that many elderly individuals suffer from chronic diseases and require help. Diabetes has the leading cause. The causes of these diseases are known and can be managed. Ireland implements various policies to discourage unhealthy living. Other interventions to manage the disease include education, capacity building, and improvement of the healthcare system. Patients and their caregivers are also dedicated to managing the situation by being positive. Nevertheless, Ireland encounters challenges that hinder the effective management of chronic disease.
References
Allegrante, J.P., Wells, M.T. and Peterson, J.C., 2019. Interventions to support behavioral self-management of chronic diseases. Annual review of public health, 40, pp.127-146.
Barr, R., Green, C.A., Sande, C.J. and Drysdale, S.B., 2019. Respiratory syncytial virus: diagnosis, prevention, and management. Therapeutic advances in infectious disease, 6, p.2049936119865798.
Hernández, B., Reilly, R.B. and Kenny, R.A., 2019. Investigation of multimorbidity and prevalent disease combinations in older Irish adults using network analysis and association rules. Scientific reports, 9(1), p.14567.
Jiang, J. and Cameron, A.F., 2020. IT-Enabled Self-Monitoring for Chronic Disease Self-Management: An Interdisciplinary Review. MIS Quarterly, 44(1).
Plumb, J., Weinstein, L. C., Brawer, R., & Scott, K. (2012). Community-based partnerships for improving chronic disease management. Primary care, 39(2), 433–447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pop.2012.03.011
Tandan, M., Twomey, B., Twomey, L., Egan, M., & Bury, G. 2022. National Chronic Disease Management Programmes in Irish General Practice-Preparedness and Challenges. Journal of personalized medicine, 12(7), 1157. https://doi.org/10.3390/jpm12071157
Wagner, E.H., 2019. Organizing care for patients with chronic illness revisited. The Milbank Quarterly, 97(3), p.659.
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