Patient Delay Essay

Patient delay is the period of delay between the discovery of illness signs and symptoms and a patient first time visiting a health care provider. When symptoms of potential serious illness start developing, seeking treatment is crucial. Delay in seeking treatment increases morbidity and mortality oftenly.

There are 4 stages of delay behavior and they are appraisal delay, illness delay, utilization delay and medical delay. Firstly, for appraisal delay it is the time the patient takes to assess a symptom as a sign of illness. When a patient whom experience a painful symptom, and did not research about their symptoms have a short appraisal delay. Normally when such a thing happens, they will not act as they are not aware of the illness.

In conclusion, it is always better to seek medical treatment early. This is because by delaying it, it can further cause complications which may lead to death. For example, even a fever we should not take it lightly because when we delay it by not going to see the doctor it may cause someone to have brain damage if complications arise.

Furthermore, for patients whom are diagnose with cancer should seek treatment early when its at the early stage. Delaying it may cause the cancer to reach the last stage which is where nothing can be done to cure it because the cancer has spread all over the body which will cause someone’s death.

For me what I will do to prevent such a thing to happen to me or my closed love ones is whenever there are symptoms showing up I should not ignore it and instead I should immediately visit the doctor to avoid any further complications. I will also spread this to my closed love ones so that they will also be aware of how important it is to seek medical treatment early rather than delaying