Strategies for Legislative Change
The modern healthcare system is laden with a myriad of laws, policies and regulations imposed by various parties in the quest for delivering quality care. These measures can sometimes pose a hindrance to the care providers and the patients in terms of cost and access to quality care. As such, it is paramount to identify such cases and advocate for better policy changes that will provide the patient with better treatments or alternate treatment. For this topic, I will discuss the inappropriate use of Electroshock (ECT) as a treatment procedure for patients suffering from depression.
ECT is a medical procedure that involves placing electrodes to the forehead of a patient and then passing electric current into the brain. ECT is a controversial treatment procedure still in use up to date.
The significant advantages of using the procedure are that it is important as a choice treatment. Any individual can choose not to undergo the process or to do so since it is never in use as a first-line treatment option. Secondly, the treatment is beneficial in the treatment of depression and schizophrenia with 75-85 per cent of patients completely recovering from their symptoms. Thirdly it is a treatment option for people suffering from suicide risk and mania (Rzesnitzek & Lang, 2017).
Disadvantages include the patients suffering from seizures lasting up to 60 seconds. Secondly is that it causes short term memory loss and thirdly is the patient is at risk of developing heart problems
Strategies to take to ensure policy changes can start from simple methods. Making calls to particular offices and informing them of your opinion on the case and offer them better policy options. Secondly, Letter writing is another method of airing grievances and getting a platform to advocate for the changes to the present policies. Thirdly, joining an organisation will provide funds and support to the cause and also help bring in better ideas, sometimes these policy changes are too significant to advocate alone. The fourth method is running for office to gain a higher platform to handle these policy changes. The fifth method is campaigning for individuals with the same ideas to get into power and thus get them to work on the controversial policies (Fyall & McQuire, 2015).