Individual’s Foot Health
15.5 Fear of Coping with Decreasing Foot Health
Foot health is not a stable status. It can change along with ageing, foot self-care, way of life and health status. Especially older persons are worried about how they will cope when their foot health decreases. When foot problems are related to cer- tain long-term health conditions such as diabetes mellitus or rheumatoid arthritis, all other health issues are discussed more frequently than foot problems during physical appointments. Despite this, foot problems cause significant deficiencies and trouble in patients’ daily lives. Because of foot problems, the patients must modify their daily activities and coping strategies to be able to live as active a life as possible. Due to these modifications, they are afraid of how they can cope in the future with decreasing foot health [9].
Despite these strong concerns, patients rarely report their foot problems [8].
They find the look of their feet irritating and sometimes ugly [23] and are not will- ing to show their feet. They are also unsure who to contact [25]. They only mention the problems when they consider that the situation is unbearable. Foot health status is not stable, it changes; when having a physician’s appointment, the foot problems may not be evident and thus remain unassessed. Instead, the patients try to do everything they can by themselves. They seek information from the Internet, col- leagues and friends. Using this information, they try to self-diagnose and self-care for their feet [9]. However, the information received and gathered is often incor- rect, nonevidence based and outdated [32]. Using this kind of information leads to inadequate self-care activities and, in many cases, to more complications rather than healthy outcomes.
Conclusions
Several ethical issues related to foot health care can be identified. Individuality and body image are central aspects when caring for patients with foot problems.
Individuality could be supported by assessing patients’ foot health regularly and asking patients about the influence of their feet on their daily life. Many persons with long-term health conditions are active and try to manage with daily activi- ties despite having foot problems. However, patients experience foot problems and bodily changes differently, which is why the discussion about ethical issues in foot health care needs to continue, and ethical sensitivity to reporting and bringing the issues to public awareness must be encouraged.
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© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 R. Suhonen et al. (eds.), Individualized Care,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89899-5_16 E. Papastavrou
School of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus
e-mail: [email protected]