Technological advancements in healthcare
Patient care is an issue that has proved to be challenging for health caregivers in the contemporary world. It has turned to be an elusive goal as technologists, health care experts, and family caregivers struggle to device a way that patients can actively participate in the maintenance and preventive care at home. A new strange paradox has emerged where an increase in technology meant to help patients remember taking their daily pills or meet their care providers makes the providers realize how long the engagement rates become and gets confounded. Positive psychology involves the study of personal growth and happiness. It has achieved a lot of influence in the field of mental health as well as in developing a new way of promoting patient care technology and management. This particular paper seeks to shows how positive psychology can improve healthcare and help change behaviors and attitudes of patients towards their health care using the PERMA model.
One common thing about clinicians is that they primarily focus on clinical variables involved in healthcare and rely on the patient’s feelings. Health technologists emphasize technology in handling patients and try to look for the least cumbersome tools in achieving their goals. They mostly don’t see past their traditional paradigms. The entire medicine field has also been focusing on the diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of diseases, often forgetting that the health of an individual entails more than the mere presence of the illness. They fail to realize that understanding activities that motivate human beings in doing something makes it easier for you to devise plans that make more people engage with programs and devices than they can, using with their traditional approaches. This critical aspect of taking care of patients highlights the importance of positive psychology in the field and how it can change how clinicians and technologists deliver their services.
A study conducted by Lyubomirsky and colleagues suggests that happiness is essential in triggering success outcomes. Positive moods and emotions among people lead them to feel, think, and act in ways that promote involvement with approach goals and resource building (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005, p. 816). This vital aspect of the promotion of work outcomes drives us to positive emotion, as defined in the PERMA model. In health care, we get a better analysis of the impact of positive emotion if we look at it in terms of the effect it has on health caregivers and the patients. It is the most apparent connection to happiness, and both of them deserve happiness for an improved outcome. Focusing on a positive emotion entails more than just smiling: it broadens to the ability to be optimistic and view your life from a constructive perspective. It changes the mindset and bodily systems of people and predicts various outcomes that warrant a better result in the provision of health care. It is a vital aspect that improves one’s perception of self and others around him. Chronically happy persons have proved to develop positive attitudes towards others (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005, p. 825).
We understand that health care professions require are sometimes tiresome as nurses and other healthcare workers are required to work extra hours to save lives. To grasp a better example of this experience, we can look at the current pandemic that has seen nurses and other health care workers in almost all parts of the world work for long hours due to the pressing demands caused by the crisis. It is no doubt that healthcare workers get tired and sometimes need to rest even before their duties are finished. But what do they require to keep going and deliver their services as expected? They need to have positive emotions. Positivity in their work can inspire them and other people around them to embrace creativity and take more chances in their daily chores.
As long as healthcare workers may be dedicated to delivering excellent services to patients, the goals cannot be achieved without cooperation between the two parties. Apart from financial issues, it is crucial to note that two of the biggest reasons as to why patients may not entirely adhere to their medications are the irrational fear and disbelief in diagnosis. In irrational fear, for example, we can think of a patient who fears to take a specific red pill, perhaps because his late friend used to take medicine with the same color. In such an incident, the patients may start thinking that he is the next one to die. They can as well relate similar experiences and have disbelief in diagnosis. In such cases, positive emotion is required by the patient to motivate him towards adhering to proper medication procedures. Acting rightly is an opportunity that the patients should grasp with immediate effects because it is meant to better their general health. A study by Tykocinski and Pittman, 1998, p. 609, shows a failure to act timely will probably lead to missing essential opportunities hence regrets in life. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to the patients, which come through positive emotion, are thus crucial for their improved healthcare.
Engagement is vital in healthcare. There are so many activities needing our involvement, and that flood our bodies with hormones and neurotransmitters elevating our sense of well-being. This type of engagement is vital in helping us remain present and synthesize the activities which give us calmness, joy, and focus. There are various activities in which people can find enjoyment. It can be playing a sport, a guitar, a hobby, working on an exciting project in the workplace, or even dancing. Like any other person, health care workers need something in their lives that absorbs them into their present moment, giving a good connection between their minds and their healthcare activities. This kind of mental engagement is crucial because it stretches their skills, intelligence, and emotional capabilities. The same type of engagement can cat as cognitive-behavioral therapy to patients. It is an excellent attempt to offer essential skills to patients, which helps them become more adaptive to problem-solving and approaching their health challenges with confidence and positivity (Grant et al., 2005, p. 16).
Relationships and social connections are vital in enhancing better healthcare outcomes. The pursuant for happiness should not be guided by the idea of “individuality” where people go to shores to enjoy. Human beings are social animals, and thus we need one another to lead a healthy life. Healthcare workers and patients should build connections that promote intimacy, love, and strong physical and emotional interactions amongst themselves. A healthy relationship also helps people get quick support from friends in times of difficulties when resilience is required. Basically, isolation activates our pain centers, which act to negate the process of healing and proper healthcare. “Phubbing” during social interaction is one of the behaviors that motivate isolation and should be highly avoided. Cooperation and good relationships are, therefore, crucial positive psychology tools that are useful in improving healthcare.
Intrinsic motivation of individuals is vital in providing meaning for their lives.
Meaning involves knowing why you exist and living to achieve your goals. Although media seems to worship money and material wealth as the only source of happiness, it reaches a time where healthcare workers and patients may be pressed by their situations to the extent of not finding any pleasure in money. It is during those moments that they need to understand the meaning of their lives and get motivated to face the challenges they face appropriately. They also require accomplishment to help them flourish and thrive. Setting clear goals and having ambition in life can help us achieve things that give us a sense of accomplishment. We should, therefore, make realistic goals that we can meet and put the right measures to work towards achieving them.
In conclusion, the current technological advancements come with their negative side. The negative psychological effect is one of the disadvantages that we may experience. Healthcare is one of the industries greatly affected and requires the use of positive psychology to make it better. Application of the PERMA model not only betters service delivery by healthcare workers but also improves cooperation with patients. It also helps the patients develop the right attitude towards medication and take vital steps that help them respond to treatments well. They all need to have a positive mind set up.