After having concluded our three week trilogy with Health Promotion, here is what I had to take away from it all. We are working towards a goal; and that is to enable individuals to increase control over their lives. This, to me, is the heart of health promotion; helping individuals help themselves. And only when we reach this goal, will the burden on our current health care system truly be alleviated. Here is my question: what happens when that goal is reached? What happens to the role of nutrition professionals?
In our discussion regarding community health centres, the take-home message was “Healthy individuals make healthy communities”. Suppose sometime in the future, our goal is reached, and individuals are well aware of nutritional faux-pas, what happens then to the professionals that are no longer needed? What is there left for us to do with our years of education and training? It’s not that I don’t want to help people, but I also want to make sure that we won’t be left, at the end of this journey, as the ones who now need help because we’re unemployed.
Currently, there is a need for health care reform, in order to ensure the sustainability of our health care system. Perhaps a ‘Nutritional professionals reform’ will be called for in due time?
Several weeks ago, an elderly couple approached me and asked which types of olive oil they are supposed to cook with, because they had been told that you cannot cook with certain types. This question caught me so off-guard. First off, I did not realise there were olive oils that ‘should not’ be used in cooking. Second, I felt so embarrassed that as a fourth-year nutrition student, I was unable to answer this old man’s seemingly simple question. I eventually did some research at home and was relieved to find out the only negative thing about cooking with certain olive oils is causing it to lose its taste. Now looking back at this incident, I can’t help but wonder what would happen when the public (lay people) will know more about these nutrition-related information than us? Is there a need for our roles to evolve as the health of our communities do so?
Although personally I do not think we will come to this scenario, when people will be knowledgeable and healthy, I think you are raising an important question. I think that as it happens in any branch of economy, it will have to happen in health care. When the consumers demand environmentally friendly products, the industry delivers. The public is demanding holistic approaches to health and the health care needs to adjust. We see more and more that people do not change their eating habits based on our scientifically-based advice. We need to do more than that. Will we ever go out of business? Or will we have to change how we do business?
ReplyDelete