Preventive Care
Preventive Care
Preventative care is a form of healthcare that prevents disease, injury or illness – essentially taking steps to live well for as long as possible so that your health stays at a good overall level, rather than living an unhealthy lifestyle and then tackling subsequent health problems as they appear. It's like regularly servicing your car so that you can pre-empt and try to starve off problems, rather than neglecting the engine and then having to deal with more serious problems later on.
Preventative care is also about how the healthcare system can try to predict problems before they appear or diagnose them early through screening and the use of preventative solutions, such as vaccinations.
Levels of Prevention
Primordial - The primordial level of prevention involves a whole population approach to avoiding factors that are known to increase the risk of disease rather than that can be targeted on an individual level. This includes improving sanitation, environmental factors such as green energy to avoid pollutants and educating on healthy lifestyles from a young age.
Primary- Primary prevention is about reducing risk factors that could lead to the onset of chronic disease. This includes reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease through not smoking and eating healthily, for example.  Primary prevention also involves ensuring greater resistance to disease through vaccinations given at key times in a person's life, i.e. childhood vaccinations and the flu vaccine in older age.
Secondary -Secondary prevention is when certain risk factors have been identified, and screening is used as an effective way of pre-empting symptoms, for instance, mammograms in women identified as at greater risk of developing breast cancer. This can be because of age, genetic predisposition, pre-existing conditions, or lifestyle, for instance. An individual is expected to take greater responsibility for themselves in secondary prevention, and healthcare provider is required to engage with their patients actively.
Tertiary -The tertiary level of prevention is focused on reversing or delaying a particular disease. If a person has been diagnosed with a condition, they will often spend more time in clinical settings or receive higher levels of support elsewhere, such as through nurse-led care at home. The tertiary level of preventative care is often about ensuring a person's quality of life is as high as possible for as long as possible, regardless of life expectancy.
The tertiary level of care is when we often become involved with our customers at Helping Hands, as they are often living with chronic diseases, life-limiting conditions, or need regular treatment to prolong their quality of life – however, we can get involved at whatever level.