Assignment: Imagery for Patients with Pain or Anxiety
Imagery is a therapeutic technique that healthcare professionals utilize in the treatment of pain and anxiety in their patients. It entails mental visualization and relaxation in uplifting the moods of patients who feel depressed. The first step to be taken in the process is to guide the patient in creating a mental image on how they would guide improve their healing process. The first step is relaxation breathing. Breathing leads to a feeling of relaxation which would then lead to the stabilization of heart rates which consequently reduces the levels of anxiety that could be existent in an individual.
Mind over pain is a notable technique that is used in the imagery process to manage depression and anxiety. The
method is utilized in reducing the levels of cortisol in the body which is often responsible for inflammation in the body. Mind over pain is used to entails guiding the patients into a relaxation process which engages the emotion, sounds, and sights to facilitate the relaxation of the nurses and gaining of a therapeutic feeling that would then tend to exonerate the sensation of pain in an individual.
Imagery is beneficial to patients who feel pain from medical conditions such as arthritis. Mercy, Shini, Kamaraj and Rachel (2017) affirm that guided imagery is an essential way of minimizing the reliance on pain medication to patients. The nurse who offers the training to the patient has to take them through a ten-minute exercise, which the patients would then need to reciprocate on his or her own. Additionally, the nurse has the role of conduct follow up to the patient to determine the efficacy of the intervention to the patient when the intervention is used.
References
Mercy, J., Shini, M., Kamaraj, R. P., & Rachel, R. (2017). Guided imagery therapy on the level of test anxiety among nursing students. TNNMC Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 5(2), 18-21.