The Lifespan Theory in Nursing
From a practical point of approach, it has been identified that nurses interact with individuals as well as patients at every point in their lives. Either in the administration of diagnostic care as well as patient-centered care, nurses have been observed to play a critical role in the healthcare setting. However, this has commonly been viewed from a cross-sectional as well as a process-oriented approach that has not attributed the nursing profession with the exact acknowledgment for the role that the group lays in the therapeutic health administration process. The life course health development theory, i.e., (LCHD) is a nursing theory that tries to look into the role that the nurses play in the healthy aspects of the life of an individual. The LCHD development theory focuses on the broader perspective of the life development process from pre-conception all the way through adulthood and into late adulthood.
The life course health development theory got introduced for scholarly review by physician David Barker and sociologist Glen Elder, Jr. Barker’s who observed that low birth weight often resulted in the occurrence of cardiovascular problems in middle adulthood (Arcoleo et al. 2018). This, therefore, formed the basis for future research on the fetal origin of the disease. The theory is based upon the presumptions that the healthy wellbeing of an individual is a result of the interaction between genetic, behavioral, biological, social, economic, among other surrounding environmental factors that keep on varying as a child goes through the various developmental processes.
The theory also takes into account the role that prevention, as well as intergenerational changes, play in determining the health outcomes of a given individual in the course of their lifespan. Through the utilization of such an interdisciplinary life-course theory, it is possible for the nursing fraternity to come up with new and improved mechanisms that could be essential in the development of new and improved treatment approaches that are based upon a lifelong cumulative diagnostic treatment administration process.
The LCHD approach takes into account the environmental, social as well as the biological factors in trying to perceive how various health exposure conditions in the early developmental stages affect the future health outcomes of a given individual in old age. Throughout the developmental process, there is an increased accumulation of risks as well as the adaptation to protective factors that enable on to adapt to the variants. Old age health problems have been identified to be as a result of exposure to life-long predisposing factors that may put an individual at the risk of contracting a given condition. Through the LCD approach, it is possible to enhance the treatment process by taking into account the expository as well as the causative agent of a certain condition that the patient might have been exposed to under different environmental settings.
It is necessary to support such research courses as a break-through in such a field is likely to impact the healthcare system significantly. Certain terminal illnesses could be avoided through lifestyle adaptive changes that would result in reduced exposure to ailment causative agents. For instance, this is the current treatment method that is being used in the treatment of type II diabetes, which has been identified to be mainly a lifestyle condition. Appling such treatment approaches in other aspects of the healthcare setting could help in the prevention as well as the cure for various old age-related ailments through simple lifestyle adaptations (Power, Kuh & Morton, 2013).