Recently, the Quillota Petorca Biprovincial Hospital became the first public hospital in the country to adopt Lifestyle Medicine as a way to treat chronic diseases in adults from a comprehensive or holistic approach in which six areas of each patient’s life are worked on. to go, from there, addressing the problems that cause problems in your health.
Thus, this Polyclinic now available in the Attached Specialty Clinic of the healthcare facility, after receiving the referral from a hospital service, carries out monthly coaching with each patient in order to vary those lifestyle habits that may be harmful to health.
The six pillars identified by Lifestyle Medicine, an approach born in the United States to treat the health problems of a patient as a whole, are: sleeping habits, eating, exercise, consumption of toxic or substances, interpersonal relationships and management of stress. Thus, based on one or more of these 6 pillars that are identified in the patient, work can be done to prevent these factors from affecting the poor health of the patient or user.
The promoter of this initiative at the Quillota Petorca Biprovincial Hospital is Dr. Macarena Jordán Puelma, pediatrician and neonatologist, who is a member of the Chilean Medical Society of Lifestyles in the country and coordinator of the Food Committee of said group, who realized the need to educate patients and their families about health when treating premature and small gestational age babies in the Neonatology Unit of the Biprovincial Hospital.
Given the risks that premature babies have of generating chronic diseases in their adulthood, such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity, among others, Dr. Jordán, as Head of the Neonatology Unit, adopted this holistic approach to health education with the parents and caregivers of these newborns with workshops focused on this subject, which are now expanded to other types of patients and their families. “This is how this health education polyclinic was born, where we are going to focus on the habits of the family group, around the guagüitas; but we also extend it to parents of pediatric patients, staff, Internal Medicine patients and other Hospital services who require this complete, holistic approach to their health habits to subsequently treat specific pathologies. It is a long-term investment, since the idea is that we all learn to take care of ourselves more, to have healthy habits to get sick less.”
Thus, this new Polyclinic of the Specialty Clinic of the Quillota Petorca Biprovincial Hospital aims at a change of mentality in society regarding pathologies, emphasizing their prevention from the first stages of life and seeing the health of the human body as a whole, in which various physical and environmental components of each person interact. This was confirmed by the Director of the Biprovincial Hospital, Eduardo Lara Hernández, who also highlighted the importance of educational and preventive health work to avoid congested hospitals. “We are very happy to enable this new Lifestyle Medicine Polyclinic in our Hospital, which focuses on six pillars that are fundamental in Healthy Lifestyles with comprehensive care of all the effects that these lifestyles can bring with them. life. It is important, for example, to highlight that the quality of sleep, stress, associated with life, work, are essential to be treated in this Polyclinic to improve the lives of all our users,” argued the Director.
Clinic starts Lifestyle Medicine Polyclinic
In this way, the Specialty Clinic attached to the Quillota Petorca Biprovincial Hospital promoted and supported this initiative, which initially starts with two hours of medical treatment per week, but which, according to demand, could be expanded so that other doctors or other professionals health professionals such as Nutritionists, Kinesiologists focus on preventive work that has an impact on such important issues as the health of the population, the reduction of health costs for society, fewer medical licenses, reduction in cases of abandonment, drug addiction or stress , among others.
Thus, Lifestyle Medicine is currently an approach that seeks to prevent, treat or reverse chronic diseases of the population through user education. In this regard, Gonzalo Varas Durán, Head of the Specialty Clinic of the Biprovincial Hospital, stated: “The idea of this Polyclinic is to aim to change the focus from our usual way of looking at Medicine as a curative activity towards a more preventive approach; and in this the idea is to change certain behaviors, certain lifestyles. The idea of the Clinic is, specifically, to aim to modernize some medical care and take advantage, logically, of the arrival of new specialist doctors who can contribute to innovate health care in our specialty center,” said the kinesiologist.
Furthermore, the idea is that the Biprovincial Hospital as a whole addresses Lifestyle Medicine as an institutional issue; For example, the idea is that the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Unit makes Exercise Plans for patients to keep them active. With this, the base care hospital of the provinces of Quillota and Petorca becomes a leader in this matter at the national level, since this holistic medicinal approach, until now, was only present in Primary Health Care.