Empowerment

[Imagine_DavidParticipant]

Empowerment:
New Role for Health Professionals, New Role for Patients
Martha M. Funnell, MS, RN, CDE
Empowerment is a vision or philosophy that recognizes the fundamental right and responsibility of patients to be the primary decision-makers in the management of their diabetes. As a philosophy, it guides each interaction with patients whether the purpose is care or education. Embracing the empowerment philosophy requires that professionals practice in ways that are consistent with this approach. This represents a paradigm-shift for both patients and professionals because it requires new roles.

The role for professionals includes, to:

provide information so that patients can make informed-decisions about the costs and benefits of therapeutic and behavioral options;
create a patient-centered environment;
establish a partnership with patients and their families;
provide information about behavior change and problem solving strategies;
develop collaborative goals;
support and facilitate patients in their role as decision-maker;
relinquish old common dysfunctional models of care (e.g., adherence, compliance).

As a partner the role for patients includes, to:

provide information about feelings, values, needs and abilities;
establish a partnership with health care team;
assume responsibility for decision making and outcomes;
develop and work toward self-selected goals;
become an active, involved consumer of diabetes care.

Our practice is defined by a vision that serves as its basis and the roles in relationships that we create. When our vision changes from traditional care to an empowerment-based philosophy, the roles that health professionals and patients assume and the subsequent relationships we create also change. Empowerment represents a vision based on the realities of diabetes as a self-managed disease. It allows us and guides us in creating more effective and satisfying relationships and outcomes.

 

[Imagine_DavidParticipant]

Can I edit this post???

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by  Imagine_David.

[Imagine_DavidParticipant]

How does your health care professional empower you?

[Imagine_DavidParticipant]

“The teacher, if he is indeed wise, does not bid you to enter the house
of his wisdom, but leads you to the threshold of your own mind”
Kahill Gibran (1883-1931)
Syrian symbolist poet and painter

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