How Occupational Therapy helps people with chronic diseases?

Occupational Therapists are health professionals skilled in physical and psychosocial rehabilitation for people with disabilities, chronic diseases, and other medical conditions. Occupational therapy is dedicated to enabling individuals to participate in fruitful and meaningful activities of life. During the evaluation and intervention process, practitioners interact and collaborate with patients and their caregivers to achieve better results. By considering limitations and abilities of a patient, environmental features, and the specific demands of the activities that are important for the family or patient, occupational therapy practitioners help their patients to live life to its fullest.

How occupational therapy helps chronic disease management?

Occupational Therapy supports chronic disease management in several ways based on the nature and course of the specific conditions, goals for patients with chronic health conditions may include following:

·         Attending problems or symptoms associated with specific chronic illness to manage and sustain current abilities.

·         Developing strategies to embed energy conservation and activity modification techniques into daily schedule to cope with physical demands and reduce fatigue associated with many chronic conditions.

·         Individualising adaptations to efficiently conduct routine health management activities.

·         Learning and incorporating health management tasks into current habits so they become part of patient’s routine.

·         Teaching and demonstrating techniques to ease stress, help cope with pain, manage tiredness, or difficult symptoms associated with the disease.

·         Adapting activities to make them suitable for changing abilities and enable activities to continue.

·         Developing cope strategies, behaviour, habits, routines, and lifestyle adaptations to support physical and psychosocial health and well-being.

In occupational therapy, self management is recognised as an effective method to the management of chronic health conditions. It is the individual’s ability to manage the symptoms, treatment, physical and psychosocial consequences and lifestyle changes inherent in living with a chronic disease. Efficacious self-management includes ability to monitor one’s condition and to affect the cognitive, behavioural, and emotional responses essential to keep an adequate quality of life. 

Your World Healthcare UK is one of the leading recruiters for Occupational Therapy Jobs. If you are looking for a OT jobs or aOT Professionals, visit us at: http://www.yourworldhealthcare.co.uk/ - or contact our team 020 7220 0811.

A Healthy Lifestyle For Cancer Prevention!

Did you know you can reduce your risk of cancer by adopting a healthy lifestyle? In 2009, approx 156,900 people in the UK died from cancer according to the NHS. However, since the 1990s survival rates in men and women have improved for the majority of cancers. There are no definitive ways to avert cancer, but you can minimise your risk, with a healthier lifestyle.
The risk factors that you can do something about, include smoking and being overweight,  there are certain things you can do, to reduce your risk. Leading a healthy life can help minimise your risk of developing certain cancer types. You can achieve this by adopting a healthy routine:
•    Eat a balanced diet
•    Maintain a healthy weight
•    Avoid alcohol (or drink less)
•    Do not smoke
•    Protect your skin from sun damage
Eating Healthy
Often, you will find stories and researches about various foods and diets in connection to preventing cancer. This happens because a lot of research and development work is going into diet and cancer care. However it is not as simple to find the link between diet and cancer because there are several factors involved and many cancers can take years to grow. 
Researches indicate that no single food can prevent cancer from developing. In general, researchshows a positive link between eating particular groups of foods, instead of some specific foods, vitamins, or nutrients, and a reduction in cancer risk. Furthermore, a healthy balanced diet constitutes:
•    Significant amount of fruits and veggies – Five portions a day!
•    Significant amount of bread, rice, potatoes, pastas, and other starchy foods – Preferable to eat whole grain foods
•    Adequate amount of meat, fish, eggs, beans, and other non-dairy sources of protein
•    Some portions of milk and dairy items
•    Just a small amount of high in fat or sugars, including cakes, crisps, and biscuits, etc.
Dieticians play an integral role in helping people with the balanced diet and other healthier life activities.
Maintain Weight

In the UK, more than 60% of the population is overweight or obese. Being overweight or obese can increase your risk of some cancers such as:
•    Bowel Cancer
•    Pancreatic Cancer
•    Oesophageal Cancer
•    Breast Cancer
•    Cancer of the Womb (uterus)
•    Kidney Cancer
To find out whether you are a healthy weight or not, you can use a BMI healthy weight calculator.
Say NO to Alcohol
Drinking alcohol is known to develop your risk of some cancers, including:
•    Mouth Cancer
•    Pharynx and Larynx Cancer
•    Oesophageal Cancer
•    Colorectal Cancer in men
•    Breast Cancer
Moreover, it is potentially a cause of cancers such as colorectal cancer in women and liver cancer. It is advised that women should not drink over 2-3 units of alcohol in a day and men should avoid drinking more than 3-4 units a day.
Stop Smoking

Lung cancer is the leading cause of deaths in UK, it accounts for around a quarter of cancer deaths, and 90% of lung cancer cases are related to smoking.  "Stopping smoking greatly cuts the risk of developing cancer," says Hazel Nunn, Cancer Research UK's health information officer. "The earlier you stop, the greater the impact. But it's never too late to quit. People who quit smoking at 30 live nearly as long as non-smokers and those who quit at 50 can still undo half the damage."
Avoid Sun Damage

To prevent skin cancer, taking care in the sun is important. You can follow cancer research UK’s SunSmart plan to protect your skin from damage:
•    Spend time in the shade between 11am and 3pm.
•    Make sure you never burn.
•    Cover yourself up with a T-shirt, hat and sunglasses.
•    Take care not to let children get burned.
•    Use sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15.

For dietitian jobs, visit Your World UK – a leading healthcare recruitment agency, helping dieticians and nutritionists find quality jobs in organizations throughout the UK. http://www.yourworldhealthcare.co.uk/medical-vacancies/dietetics_nutrition/

Why GP Locums are important?

In the UK, there are an estimated more than 15,000 GPs working as Locums. They comprise a quarter of the general practice workforce in the region and attend to up to 36 million patients each year. A Locum is a qualified doctor who offers provisional replacement or covers sick leaves, staff holidays, or other professional commitments. Sometimes, newly qualified doctors work as locums to gain experience and get familiar with hospital environment. There are also more experienced doctors who wish to work flexibility, or doctors from overseas and retired doctors who take up locum positions.

Dr Richard Fieldhouse, a GP Locum and Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of Sessional GPs, in an interview said, “I’ve seen a jump in the number of GP partners leaving their regular practices mid-career to become locums, mostly from the sheer burden of extra paperwork and clinics they have to do, also, many more GPs these days are female. Working freelance as a locum can offer those with families a much better work-life balance.”

Although locums are skilled to the same extent as other doctors, lots of people are reluctant to perceive the stand-in. This is perhaps because locums tend to make the spotlight only when things go wrong. Though the General Medical Council didn’t gather figures about objections against GP Locums, experts believe public perception is that numbers are high.

‘This idea that locums are somehow second-rate doctors is unfair,’ says Dr Fieldhouse. ‘I hear so much about patients wanting continuity of care — which is true — but with continuity can sometimes comes complacency. If a GP is seeing a patient repeatedly about a problem, it can sometimes be hard to spot what is wrong because the changes creep up over time. A locum might walk in and spot it straight away. They may also find it easier to say a difficult thing such as the patient needs to lose weight or give up smoking.”

Deputy Chairman of the British Medical Association’s General Practice Committee, Dr Richard Vautry, concurs that sometimes considering a different doctor/opinion, whether from within the practice or somewhere else, can be a good thing.

Further, Shehnaz Somjee, a surgeon and chair of the Locum Doctors’ Association, a professional body representing 4,000 locums, state that locums or stand-in doctors are frequently subject to more careful scrutiny than regular GPs. “Locums have to prove themselves in every job. When you start a new post, all the other staff eyes your work through the microscope. If any slight mistake is made, it creates immediate alarm. I know one locum who, because of his wide experience in different general practices, was able to spot an adverse drug reaction when the patient’s own doctor failed to do so.”

Your World Healthcare UK is a leading healthcare recruitment agency and supplies quality professionals to wide ranging private and public organisations. Our experienced GP recruitment consultants have an impressive track record of successfully placing locums in surgeries, prisons and the Armed Forces.

For more detail please Visit our job board at http://www.yourworldhealthcare.co.uk/medical-vacancies/gp_locums/.