Self-care Movement Research Articles

Comparative analysis of osteopathic correction and standard comprehensive rehabilitation of patients with posttraumatic contractures of the upper limb joints

Introduction. Prolonged immobilization of the upper limb after various injuries leads to persistent contracture. Contractures of the upper limb joints are a severe orthopedic pathology that leads to a long-term decrease in working capacity and permanent disability. In the absence of treatment, the persistent changes in the articular elements can develop. Patients with contractures of the upper limb joints get treatment for a long time in polyclinics and hospitals, but the treatment does not always lead to the desired results. At the same time, an essential condition for treatment in outpatient medical institutions is the possibility of daily self-care and independent movement of the patient, as well as daily visits to a medical institution, but it is not always possible. In this regard, the search for treatment methods with comparable effectiveness, but requiring a signifi cantly smaller number of medical procedures and, accordingly, visits to specialized institutions, is relevant. Osteopathic correction could potentially be among these methods.The aim of the study is to compare the effectiveness of osteopathic correction and standard complex rehabilitation of patients with post-traumatic contractures of the upper limb joints.Materials and methods. The study involved 40 patients suffering from post-traumatic contractures of the upper extremities. Two groups were formed by the method of simple randomization: the main group (20 people who received osteopathic correction — 3 sessions with a frequency of 1 time in 7 days), and the control group (20 people who received standard complex rehabilitation, which included physiotherapy, physiotherapy exercises and mechanotherapy, daily for 10 days). The osteopathic status, the motion range of the upper limbs joints, and the hand muscles strength were assessed in all patients at the beginning and at the end of the study.Results. A statistically signifi cant (p<0,05) increase in the motion range and the hand muscles strength was found in both groups at the end of the study. In patients of the main group, receiving osteopathic correction, a statistically signifi cant decrease (p<0,05) in the detection frequency of some regional and local somatic dysfunctions was observed.Conclusion. The obtained results indicate the comparable results of the osteopathic correction of the upper limb joints post-traumatic contractures, and of the standard complex rehabilitation. Since osteopathic correction of post-traumatic contractures is carried out once every 7–10 days, it can be recommended for patients who, for various reasons, cannot regularly visit outpatient rehabilitation departments for a long time.

Orem's Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory: Relevance and Need for Refinement.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the relevance of Orem's Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory (SCDNT) in contemporary and future practice, explicitly within the global self-care movement and interprofessional healthcare. The authors discuss the relevance and important strengths within Orem's nursing theory and recommend theoretical refinement within the context of significant societal and healthcare transformation. The constructs of global people-centered care and population health, with related social determinants of health, are identified as critical areas for development if SCDNT is to have continued relevance for nursing practice. Implications for theoretical thinking and nursing education are recommended.

Addressing contraceptive needs exacerbated by COVID-19: A call for increasing choice and access to self-managed methods

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of global contraception provision, exacerbating the barriers to access reproductive health services, leading to suspension of clinical services and disruption of supply chains. Critical to combatting this crisis is the expansion of healthcare to include self-care approaches to de-medicalize contraception and increase an individual's agency in determining what method they use, when they use it, and where they obtain it. Expanding the mix of self-administered contraceptives is essential for ensuring choice, access, and availability. We highlight advances in the self-care movement and actions needed to strengthen self-management approaches to maximize our chances of preventing a reproductive health crisis.

Healing Justice, Transformative Justice, and Holistic Self-Care for Social Workers.

A self-care movement for social workers is beginning to embrace mindfulness and other forms of wellness. However, self-care is often framed as merely an individualistic pursuit and may be a tool of managerialism, reinforcing the social and economic structures and culture that are causing burnout and moral injury in the first place. Particularly for people who are marginalized, the self-care movement may ignore historical trauma and the ways that interlocking oppressions contribute to stress, trauma, moral injury, and burnout. Drawing from the evidence base on East-West mind-body practices and informed by a transformative practice lens, healing justice is presented as a framework and set of practices of the whole self. The whole self includes the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, social, and ecological selves. A transformative approach to healing can be supported by enhancing the capabilities of mindfulness, compassion, curiosity, critical inquiry, effort, and equanimity. The concept of the healing justice organization is introduced as an opportunity for organizational change beginning with a set of inquiries for social work organizations to attend structurally and more purposefully to collective care.

Examining Self-Care Among Individuals Employed in Social Work Capacities

Increasingly, the social work profession recognizes the need for more attention to self-care. Concomitantly, this growing awareness and ethical commitment is fostering a burgeoning self-care movement. However, despite recognition about the importance of self-care, there is a paucity of research that explicitly examines self-care practices among social workers. This cross-sectional study examined the self-care practices of individuals employed in social work capacities (n=1,011) in one southeastern state in the United States. Findings suggest that participants in the sample engaged in personal and professional self-care practices only moderately. Further, data suggest significant group differences in the practice of self-care, by relationship status, educational attainment, health status, and current financial situation, respectively. Overall, results indicate self-care as a potential area of improvement for participants in this study, in general, and perhaps for individuals employed in social work contexts, more generally.

Self-Care as Self-Blame Redux: Stress as Personal and Political.

Chronic stress has a profound, and profoundly negative, influence on health outcomes; it is one of the mechanisms by which health outcome inequities are reproduced (Thoits 2010). Work on the social determinants of health has made it clear that social and political decisions regarding the basic organization of society are the main factors determining how much stress, and what kinds of stress, different parts of the population will experience. But, in both the technical literature and in more "popular" venues, there is an emphasis on the ways in which individuals can, through individual actions ("self-care"), reduce the harms associated with the stress that they are likely to suffer. As well-meaning as those projects may be, one result is that individuals, many of whom are already socially disadvantaged in a number of ways, end up being seen (and seeing themselves) as responsible for their own failures to adequately ameliorate the stresses that they suffer. Early criticisms of the self-care movement in the US stressed the ways in which it could be, in Sidel and Sidel's memorable phrase, "diversionary from struggles for radical change in both medicine and the broader society" (1981). Today, the diversionary attention to "self-care" grows alongside the growth of strong scholarship making clear that addressing the health inequities and poor health outcomes in countries like the US will indeed require radical social change.

Using machine learning to investigate self-medication purchasing in England via high street retailer loyalty card data.

The availability alongside growing awareness of medicine has led to increased self-treatment of minor ailments. Self-medication is where one ‘self’ diagnoses and prescribes over the counter medicines for treatment. The self-care movement has important policy implications, perceived to relieve the National Health Service (NHS) burden, increasing patient subsistence and freeing resources for more serious ailments. However, there has been little research exploring how self-medication behaviours vary between population groups due to a lack of available data. The aim of our study is to evaluate how high street retailer loyalty card data can help inform our understanding of how individuals self-medicate in England. Transaction level loyalty card data was acquired from a national high street retailer for England for 2012–2014. We calculated the proportion of loyalty card customers (n ~ 10 million) within Lower Super Output Areas who purchased the following medicines: ‘coughs and colds’, ‘Hayfever’, ‘pain relief’ and ‘sun preps’. Machine learning was used to explore how 50 sociodemographic and health accessibility features were associated towards explaining purchasing of each product group. Random Forests are used as a baseline and Gradient Boosting as our final model. Our results showed that pain relief was the most common medicine purchased. There was little difference in purchasing behaviours by sex other than for sun preps. The gradient boosting models demonstrated that socioeconomic status of areas, as well as air pollution, were important predictors of each medicine. Our study adds to the self-medication literature through demonstrating the usefulness of loyalty card records for producing insights about how self-medication varies at the national level. Big data offer novel insights that add to and address issues that traditional studies are unable to consider. New forms of data through data linkage may offer opportunities to improve current public health decision making surrounding at risk population groups within self-medication behaviours.

In report, NCPIE seeks to advance U.S. self-care movement

In report, NCPIE seeks to advance U.S. self-care movement

Live and Active Cultures: Gender, Ethnicity, and “Greek” Yogurt in America

Using a transnational and comparative cultural studies approach, this essay investigates how yogurt, perceived as a strange and foreign food in the early to mid-twentieth-century United States, became localized through intersectional processes of feminization and de-exoticization. In the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s, the dairy industry adopted a postfeminist ethos, which co-opted the hippie and feminist self-care movements that had made yogurt a staple health food outside the purview of the medical-industrial complex and on the margins of the market economy. Increasingly, yogurt was marketed to the prototypical (white middle class) dieting female, expected to discipline her body by consuming pre-proportioned approximations of dessert. The rising popularity of “Greek yogurt” in the early twenty-first century has modified this cultural neutralization by foregrounding a nonthreatening “white” ethnicity—while furthering the feminization of yogurt consumption and obscuring connections to the food cultures of the Middle East.

Socioeconomic impact of seasonal (epidemic) influenza and the role of over-the-counter medicines.

The substantial economic impact of influenza on society results primarily from lost work time and reduced productivity of patients and caregivers and increased use of medical resources. Additionally, since the 1980s, aging of the US population has meant rising influenza-related morbidity and mortality. According to the most current published data on this topic, in 2003 the total economic burden of influenza epidemics in the USA across all age groups was US$87.1 billion. As of February 2013, overall vaccine effectiveness for the 2012/2013 season was estimated to be 56 %. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases has concluded that more effective vaccines and vaccination strategies are needed. Moderate efficacy of the influenza vaccine, continued questions regarding the value of treatment with antivirals, and a growing self-care movement have led to increased use of over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, which play a vital role in managing symptoms associated with mild to moderate influenza and provide an estimated US$102 billion in annual savings for the US healthcare system. A primary benefit to society of using OTC medicines to manage influenza is decreased use of the healthcare system, thereby mitigating the socioeconomic burden of influenza. Considering the stresses placed on the US healthcare system and the substantial productivity losses resulting from seasonal influenza as well as the growing self-care movement, OTC medicines will play an important role in the course of future influenza epidemics.

Increasing Access to Nonprescription Medicines: A Global Public Health Challenge and Opportunity

As escalating health-care costs continue to be a focus of public discourse, the populace has become increasingly attentive to its own health and lifestyle choices. Nonprescription (over-the-counter, OTC) medicines represent an important option in this evolving environment and, through novel "Rx-to-OTC" switch efforts, could expand beyond their traditional role in symptomatic relief of common conditions such as minor pain, coughs, colds, heartburn, and allergy. This is certainly not a new concept. In fact, the self-care movement has roots reaching into the past century. Pharmaceutical companies and their consumer-product subsidiaries or partners have long considered and, when feasible, invested in difficult OTC switch development programs.

Self-Care, Healthcare Reform and Their Implications to Nursing

A move toward individual responsibility for health is gaining momentum in Canada. Whether or not individual responsibility for self-care practices is in the best interest of the public is debated in this article. The origins of the self-care movement in the Canadian healthcare system, its benefits and pitfalls, are explored. The role that the nursing profession can play is also discussed.

Self-care and the doctor-patient relationship.

An important factor contributing to the steep rise in health care costs in the late 1960s was a reversal from the predominance of acute illness to that of chronic disease. Beginning with the philosophy of Illich and Levin, and the practical instruments of Fries, Sehnert, Vickery, and Ferguson, a new movement in patient self-care emerged. However, such programs were not integrated into organized medical care plans and though theoretically attractive had not yet proven to improve health or decrease costs. The contributions to the self-care movement made under the intellectual guidance of Halsted Holman and the relevant literature produced are reviewed. While caring for chronic rheumatic diseases, Halsted Holman discovered that patient self-report was a more powerful predictor of outcome than were traditional biologic measures such as anti-DNA antibodies. Realizing the role that patient knowledge of their own disease course might play, he developed the Arthritis Self-Management course, a lay-led self-care program emphasizing patient participation. Holman and colleagues next elucidated the pivotal importance of Bandura's theory of self-efficacy in the improved patient outcomes initially observed. These self-care techniques were woven into the structure of the Midpeninsula Health Service, showing for the first time reductions in subsequent office visits and enhanced quality. In partnership with Kaiser Health Plan, these techniques showed improvements in self-efficacy health behaviors, status, and use in a randomized trial of more than 1,000 patients. Halsted Holman and colleagues have played a seminal role in the translation of academic self-care theory into community practice.

The Changing Face of Functional Foods

Consumers began to view food from a radically different vantage point in the 1990s. This ‘changing face’ of food has evolved into an exciting area of the food and nutrition sciences known as functional foods. Functional foods can be defined as those providing health benefits beyond basic nutrition and include whole, fortified, enriched or enhanced foods which have a potentially beneficial effect on health when consumed as part of a varied diet on a regular basis at effective levels. Interest in functional foods skyrocketed in the last decade due to a number of key factors, including the growing self-care movement, changes in food regulations and overwhelming scientific evidence highlighting the critical link between diet and health. The interest in functional foods has resulted in a number of new foods in the marketplace designed to address specific health concerns, particularly as regards chronic diseases of aging. In addition to new foods designed specifically to enhance health, however, functional foods can also include those traditional, familiar foods for which recent research findings have highlighted new health benefits or dispelled old dogma about potential adverse health effects. An excellent example is the American egg-Nature‘s original functional food. Eggs have not traditionally been regarded as a functional food, primarily due to concerns about their adverse effects on serum cholesterol levels. Furthermore, it is now known that there is little if any connection between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol levels and consuming up to one or more eggs per day does not adversely affect blood cholesterol levels. Finally, eggs are an excellent dietary source of many essential (e.g., protein, choline) and non-essential (e.g., lutein/zeaxanthin) components which may promote optimal health. Nutrition in the new millennium will be dramatically different than it was in the 20th century. Completion of the human genome project will facilitate the identification of humans predisposed to diet-related diseases. Targeted or ‘prescription’ nutrition will become the norm, enabling the food and medical industries to provide timely and individualized approaches to disease prevention and health promotion. The egg will continue to play an important role in the changing face of functional foods.

Empowering patients: Issues and strategies

Over the past few decades perspectives derived from critical social theory and other critical perspectives have infused the discourse on health, illness and healing, and have heightened awareness of the ways in which social and economic inequities experienced by particular groups determine their health. The influence of these paradigms in the health sciences occurs, simultaneously, with other movements in health care services and delivery. There has been major overhauling of health care delivery systems in many western nations with concomitant call for greater public participation and individual responsibility for health and health care (self-care). As these movements have gained momentum, ideas that suggest how people will be enabled both to attain greater social equality and to take increased responsibility for their health have flourished, and patient/consumer empowerment has become a central concept in the discourse on health. Drawing on research data from multiple sources I begin to interrogate what the notion of empowerment might mean for patients living with a chronic illness, particularly women who have immigrated to Canada; I examine the multiple layers of contexts that organize their experiences of illness. Building on earlier research that explicated the unstated ideologies that underpin the self-care movement, I extend this analysis to examine the conceptual underpinnings of “empowerment”. While not dismissing the idea of “consumer empowerment” I question whether unreflexive use of this notion within the “health care industry” might deflect our attention from the structures that perpetuate social inequities. I conclude by arguing for a perspective that will allow us to address issues pertaining to the notion of empowerment in the lives of patients, generally, as well as those who are marginalized and disadvantaged.

Decision of the I International Symposium on Rehabilitation of Neurological and Mental Patients

Diseases of the nervous system and mental illnesses that affect millions of people in Russia often lead to severe functional defects, severe social and mental maladaptation, and drastically reduce the quality of life of patients. The use of rehabilitation measures allows the vast majority of neurological patients to restore the skills of self-care and independent movement and return a significant part of neurological and mental patients to work. This makes the rehabilitation of neurological and mentally ill patients one of the most important medical and social problems. However, we have to state that in Russia there is no unified rehabilitation system that would make it possible to cover all patients and disabled people who need it with rehabilitation treatment.

Self-care and the elderly: review and implications.

Self-care is the most predominant and basic form of primary care, yet research in the area, particularly with respect to the elderly, has been minimal. As a result, despite the breadth of the self-care movement, very little is precisely known and understood about it. Diminished functional health status is the major cause of loss of independence. Self-care is conceptualized as an important strategy in maintaining functional health.

Home care management in chronic illness and the self-care movement

Over the past few decades there has been an increasing trend toward self-care and home health care, and one would suspect that these trends will continue into the next century. This article addresses the policy issues that have arisen from a program of research with families caring for a child with a chronic illness in the home and with women who have diabetes mellitus. The argument is developed that, although the home care and self-care movements can be seen as directed toward providing more humanistic care and promoting the independence of the client, the economic and sociopolitical factors that influence their development should not be overlooked. Furthermore, the "cost of caring" must be reckoned with in both human and economic terms. Cost-effective care, in the long run, will mean care that takes into account the social context of health and illness.

From activated patient to pacified activist: A study of the self-care movement in the United States

Self-care education programs in operation in the United States during the mid-1980s are surveyed by mailed questionnaire to determine the nature and content of the curricula of these programs, their organizational sponsorship, the level and types of staff working in them, and their principal prevention emphases. Results indicate that over 75% of these programs offer instruction or sponsored activities intended to help individuals or their families to: (1) increase wellness or health status through lifestyle change: (2) reduce an established risk factor; and/or (3) prevent the onset of illness or injury. Fifty-five percent of the organizations offering these services classified themselves as health services delivery organizations. A surprising finding, given the American popular media treatment of self-care as a ‘movement’, is that relatively few laypersons function as instructors in these programs. The paper describes the way in which self-care has been absorbed into the mainstream of American health care, even though the concept of self-care has tended to drop from scholarly attention in the socio-medical sciences in the United States.

Homoeopathy in America: A status report

At the turn of the 20th century, American hom~eopathy epitomized the highest standards of hom0eopathic training and care in the world. Despite the fact that it was not accepted by the medical orthodoxy in America, homceopathy was an integral part of the lives of massive numbers of Americans. In 1900, statistics indicate that approximately 15% of the American doctors considered themselves to be homoeopaths. 1 There were 22 homeeopathic medical colleges, including Boston University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Iowa, and Hahnemann Medical College. 2 There were also over 100 homceopathic hospitals, including New York City's Metropolitan Hospital with its 1,897 beds, Massachusetts Homoeopathic Hospital in Boston with its 534 beds, and Middletown State Homoeopathic Hospital (the famed mental health facility) with its 2,162 beds. 3 These impressive statistics do not alone provide an accurate picture of the high degree of acceptance and respect that homoeopathy maintained in America, since many of the country's educated, business, artistic, political, and religious elite were its advocates. William James, Mark Twain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John D. Rockefeller, William Wrigley, William Lloyd Garrison, Daniel Webster, and William Seward were but some of homoeopathy's supporters. 4 Despite homoeopathy's significant status at the turn of the century, its numbers sharply declined after 1915. American homoeopathy dwindled to near extinction until the early 1970s due to various sanctions imposed on homoeopaths by their orthodox colleagues, due to the infamous Flexner Report which led to the closing of many homoeopathic medical colleges, due to the decreasing quality of homoeopathic education in the hom0eopathic colleges, and due to infighting amongst homoeopaths. In part as the result of the emerging holistic health movement, the self-care movement, the women's movement, and human potential movement in the early 1970s, new interest in homoeopathic medicine was generated. Homceopathy was no longer declining and was now beginning to grow, albeit slowly. By the early 1980s, homoeopathy's growth had significantly increased, though it still was largely unknown to the vast majority of Americans. According to the American government's Food and Drug Administration, sales of homoeopathic medicines grew by 1000% from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. 5 To capitalize on and to augment the growth of homoeopathy in the US, several European homoeopathic manufacturers have entered the American market. Boiron purchased Bornemann and sons, VSM/Schwabe purchased Boericke and Tafel, and Dolisos opened an American office. Since there are still a relatively small number of practising homoeopaths in the US, the general public mostly relies on self-treatment. The largest number of people purchase the combination medicines or cell salts from health food stores. There is growing interest in learning how to prescribe the single medicines, though these medicines usually must be ordered by mail from a distant homoeopathic pharmacy. Sales of homeopathic medicine kits have alleviated this problem, but only slightly, since these kits usually have a limited number of medicines (2035), and many Americans prefer the ease in prescribing the 'user-friendly' combination medicines. One recent development which threatens the reputation of homceopathy today has been the recent marketing of a weight-loss product which is a combination of five homoeopathic medicines. Several of these new products were initially introduced as a 'diet patch' for the transdermal absorption of homoeopathic medicines. As part of the marketing approach, it has been recommended that the patch be placed on a specific stomach meridian acupuncture point. Several television and newspaper reports on these prod 7 ucts have brought embarrassment to hom0eopathy. The Food and Drug Administration stopped the sales of these diet patches since