Report on Diversional Therapy: Factors, Models, and Holistic Needs

This report delves into the multifaceted aspects of diversional therapy, examining the intricate relationship between holistic needs and individual health and wellbeing. It explores how physical, mental, cultural, spiritual, social, and emotional factors influence people's experiences, illustrated with real-life examples to demonstrate practical applications. The report also analyzes various healthcare service delivery models, including person-centered, integrated, and community-based approaches, evaluating their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, it provides insights into how these models are implemented in practice, highlighting the importance of understanding and addressing individual needs to improve patient outcomes. The report emphasizes the significance of overcoming stigmatization and discrimination, and adapting recreational activities to enhance mental and physical health, ensuring comprehensive care for diverse populations.

Running head: DIVERSIONAL THERAPY
Diversional Therapy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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DIVERSIONAL THERAPY
Task 1
Answer 1
The mental and physical well-being together constitutes comprehensive health and
well-being of individuals. In order to improve the overall health and well-being the holistic
needs of people must be satisfied. The holistic needs of a person encompass physical,
spiritual, cultural, mental, social and emotional (Lyons and McCafferty 2017). For example,
in aged and disabled care, people at times suffers from depression either because of lack of
social support or develops poor self-esteem as they are unable to conduct activities of daily
living (ADL). In such cases emotional support from friends, family members and healthcare
professionals can help to overcome depression. Social activities like taking part in debate
sessions or watching movies proved to be helpful (social needs). People who are unable to
conduct ADL at times gain gait proficiency when they take part in play full activities like
throwing the balls or hitting the wickets. Playful activities increases hand eye co-ordination
(physical needs) and at the same time increases attachment with other players (mental needs)
and thereby increasing confidence, promoting proficiency in ADL (Dawe et al. 2017).
Diversional activity co-coordinator also take care cultural needs by aged and disabled
individuals by framing culturally competent care plan like planning of cooking competition.
The recipe preferences are taken as per the cultural and spiritual beliefs (Lyons and
McCafferty 2017).
Answer 2
In order to demonstrate how my understanding helps influence my work, I would like
to cite one example in real life. While I started my professional life as an activity co-
oridinator, I used to think that planning activity as per the physical health needs of the older
adults or disabled individuals is comprehensive in improving his or her physical needs.

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However, my senior nurses helped me to understand that activities as diversional therapy
must be planned by taking into consideration the mental, cultural and spiritual needs. Mental,
cultural spiritual are the common unmet needs of the people.
Thus, while promote weight loss for older adults through recreational activity, I
consider personal preferences of that person. For example, a woman from aboriginal
background might feel comfortable in participating in creational activities like playing cards
but only with women (Schwarz 2016). Playing cards are common among aboriginals with
dementia will help to reduce the severity of dementia. Moreover, playing cards coincide with
the cultural and social requirements of aboriginal women and thus increasing the participation
(Doyle, Mertz-Hack and Kern 2017). Taking only women as the part of game will make
aboriginal women to feel comfortable and thus facilitating social and cultural needs (Schwarz
2016).
Answer 3
The people like the ones who have a positive overview about life or are optimistic are
more likely to make active initiatives in order to recover from disability and impairment. For
example, from my personal experience I have seen that optimistic individuals takes pro-
active approach to take part in activities like playful exercise programs in order to overcome
their disabilities like problem in maintaining body balance or inability of walk due to joints
fracture or pain. On the other hand, I have seen that pessimistic people like the people who
suffers from depression or have a self-harming attitude are less likely to take part in the
playful activities from overcoming their physical disability. The depressed or pessimistic
people mainly accuse their fate for their current condition. The optimistic and pessimistic
attitude is also influenced by the support networks or the environment in which that live. At
time I have seen that people who optimistic have supporting family members to encourage

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them continuous and proper provide proper financial, social and mental health support for
active recovery. Support coming from closed family members help to increase the mental
strength and thereby helping to overcome the barrier of physical disability (Heller, Gibbons
and Fisher 2015).
Answer 4
There are people who have attained disability due to road accidents but it was not
there fault. Such accidents might have hampered their personal and professional life like they
might have lost their jobs due to prolong tenure of disability or treatment due to disability. In
such cases people move to extreme depression, they curse their fate for their current
condition. Moreover, losing jobs imposes financial unrest that further increases tension.
Extreme depression and loosing of jobs create frustration and thus hampering their active
participation in diversional activity in order to promote recovery. I have seen people who are
disabled and have lost their jobs think that they are burden over their family and develops
self-harming attitude rather than self-help. When the families are supportive like they console
the affected individual and motivate them to get well-soon through self-initiatives are less
likely to pass on to depression and frustration. Staying with people who are victims of similar
fate also prove to be helpful in adding motivation from the surroundings and thereby helping
to increase participation.
Answer 5
Stigmatization and discrimination of disabled person hamper the process of recovery.
The disabled individuals are often discriminated from the healthy individuals stating the
reason that they are not physically fit to take part in activities like sports and conducting ADL
by taking complete authority. In society like in the rural areas of Australia I have seen that the
disabled individuals are often stigmatised as a symbol of bad luck. Continuous discrimination
and stigmatization hamper the process of active recovery. Under the community healthcare

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settings I have seen that people who are victims of stigmatization and discrimination fail to
take a comprehensive part in recreational activities. They mainly fear bullying or are shamed
of their current physical states. Overcoming stigmatization and discrimination by giving
respect, rights and power of autonomy to the disable people helps to improve their mental
health well-being and thereby helping to take active part in recreation or social activities.
Active participation further helps to improve the mental health status and physical gait based
recreational activities help to reduce the severity of the disability. I have seen that while
giving respect to the disabled people and not stereotyping the them for their disability is the
only way to improve their psychological well-being and thereby helping to move forward
towards their holistic care.
Answer 6
People like older adults with disability, who are victims of the stigmatization and
discrimination are mentally vulnerable in developing depression during the course of time. In
some cases the recreational activities must be targeted based on their mental and the physical
health. Activities like playing golf over wheelchairs might coincide with the concept of
staying active with a disability. However, I have seen that when the people having physical
disability like older adults having problem in standing up over their own feet due to
neurological problems are asked to play golf by sitting over wheel chair, they feel sad or
depressed. Playing gold over wheel-chair make them feel sad r stigmatised that they are not
normal or having certain difficulty in playing the game in a usual manner. In such cases, I
plan the physical activity sessions for recreation and recovery in such a manner that their
disability is not highlighted. In such cases I give preferences to horse riding, pool fishing,
boating or playing other water sports. These sports does not require significant activity of
legs and thus helping the disabled people to feel comparatively less stigmatised and thereby
helping to improve the mental and physical health status.

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Task 2
Three main service delivery models in health care are:
Model 1: Person-centred healthcare service delivery model
The overall vision for the people-centred healthcare is the individuals who are served
are able to take part in trusted healthcare systems that give importance of their (service users)
health needs with a holistic approach. The health system is designed around the needs of the
main stakeholders (service users) and enables the families and communities to share their
concerns with the healthcare professionals in order to highlight the main clinical priority. The
use of the effective communication skill is used in order to highlight the clinical priority of
the people receiving the person-centred care. A holistic care approach that encompasses
mental, physical, cultural, spiritual and social needs are given importance in person-centred
healthcare service delivery model (Eaton, Roberts and Turner 2015).
Model 2: Integrated healthcare service delivery model
Alternatively it is known as multi-purpose healthcare service delivery model. It refer
to a set of curative or preventive health interventions for a particular group of population.
Often but not always, this particular group of population is distinguished by its specific stage
in the life cycle for example integrated management of the physical disability like gait
balance among the older adults with Parkinson. The aim of integrated healthcare service
delivery model is to design interventions based on the client perspectives. The preferences of
therapy of care of the client are given priority in order to implement a set of intervention.
This is unlike the person-centred model where interventions are designed by the healthcare
professionals by giving priority of healthcare needs of the person. In integrated healthcare
service delivery model, the catchment population receives interventions at one location under
one overall manager (World Health Organization 2008).

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Model 3: Community based healthcare service delivery model
The community based health care service delivery model procure primary care
healthcare under community base healthcare settings. The service is mainly procured by the
community healthcare nurses with the implementation of the culturally competent healthcare
plans. It also helps to promote healthcare awareness among the mass (World Health
Organisation 2016).
Healthcare model used under my healthcare setting
In my healthcare setting, the main healthcare service delivery model use of person-
centred healthcare model. Based on the principle of the person-centred healthcare model,
person specific interventions are procured based on the holistic care needs of people (Eaton,
Roberts and Turner 2015).
Advantages and disadvantages of each healthcare model
The main advantage of the integrated healthcare service delivery is there occurs
vertical integration of different levels of service like the district hospital, health posts and the
health centres. In integrated health service a manager is in charge of the network of facilities
and other personal or non-personal and non-personal health services like the Provisional
Medical Officer, District Manager who in turn supervises the work of the managers. This
organised hierarchy system ensures well-functioning procedures along with referrals up and
down the levels of system between the private and the public providers. However, there are
certain disadvantages of the integrated healthcare service delivery model. For example,
Valentijn et al. (2015) are of the opinion that in integrated service delivery model, the main
focus is given over the maintenance of the hierarchical process. Here reporting to the
hierarchy and highlighting of the errors are given first importance. In the pressure of
maintaining proper documentation, the focus over the holistic healthcare is shifted from the
patients leading to improper healthcare outcome.

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Documentation, which is one of the strengths of the integrated healthcare service
delivery, is regarded as limitation in the community based healthcare service delivery. Reeves
et al. (2017) stated that there is little documentation in the community-based service delivery.
There is a lack of proper documentation of the information like the kind of interventions used
previously, its results and nature of the participants of in the community based healthcare
practices. The lack of documentation restricts to tract the overall outcome of the patients’
healthcare. The community-based healthcare services however, are useful in promoting
disease awareness among the mass. Like while giving care to the aged or the disabled older
adults, the community based healthcare services is found to be effectives in increasing the
healthcare awareness about the concept of healthy aging.
Person-centred healthcare service delivery model that is preached under our practice
settings score higher in comparison to the integrated and community based healthcare service
delivery models in the domain of patients’ health related outcome. Person-centred healthcare
service delivery model is based on the evidence-based practice. Kogan, Wilber and
Mosqueda (2016) stated that implementation of the evidence-based practice mainly under the
stream of the non-pharmacological interventions help to improve the overall disease outcome.
The improvement in the disease outcome helps to promote faster disease recovery and
reduction in the healthcare costs. For example, as per the evidenced based practice,
implementation of the group-based recreational activities like gardening helps to improve the
gait balance and at the same time helps to improve the hand eye co-ordination while reducing
the sense of social exclusion. Overall the gardening as a form of recreational activity helps to
improve the mental and the physical health status of a person and thereby helping to
implement holistic care approach. The person centred health care service delivery model first
highlight the clinical priority like mental, physical, social, spiritual and cultural priority.
Based on the priority of care, the healthcare intervention is designed. For example, under my

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practice setting, an older adult who is suffering from poor eye sight and lack of gait balance
and is also developing depression, the evidence-based intervention will cover both physical
and mental health aspects. I will plan the recreation activity like matching walking in the
garden areas by holding the railings in the beat of music with other peers. Presence of peers
and music will help to overcome depression. Conducting activity outdoors, under sunlight
and with traction based showed will help to prevent accidental fall due to improper gait
balance and poor eye sight. The practice walk every day morning will as per music beats will
help to improve hand eye co-ordination. One of the limitation of person-centred healthcare
approach, in majority of the cases the nurses lack the require expertise or skills for the
identification of the clinical priority and creating a barrier in implementing accurate
evidence-based practice (Christie et al. 2015).
Service delivery model and need of patient
The integrate service delivery model is suitable for the people who have multiple need
like nutritional needs (due to diabetes or malnutrition), fighting against obesity (physical
needs due to cholesterol and diabetes), lack of gait balance and eye sight (due to
neurodegenerative disease), joint pain (osteoarthritis) and depression. The multidisciplinary
team members working under the supervision of the nurse manager like dietician,
physiotherapists, and occupational therapists and diversional therapists will help to address
different health needs (Stokes 2017).
The community based healthcare service delivery approach helps to satisfy the
primary health care needs while helping to improve the level of disease awareness among the
mass. Under my practice area, the role of the recreational activity planning by a diversional
professional will help to overcome the depression among the group of the older adults who
are suffering from social exclusion because of their disability. However, community based

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healthcare service delivery model won’t help me to implement person-centred interventions
as it is directed towards the mass (Young, Camic and Tischler 2016).
The person-centred healthcare service deliver model can be implemented under the
healthcare settings or inpatient setting and outpatient settings. Under the person-centred
healthcare service delivery mode, holistic care need of the patient is taken into consideration.
Like an older adult who is suffering from dementia along with having disability to leg due to
pain and lack of balance in the knee joints, the diversional therapy will include playing
Tapping and patting. This will include making rhythmic noise together over the table by the
use of stick or spoon, following other players rhythms (Stokes 2017).

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References
Christie, J., Macmillan, M., Currie, C. and Matthews-Smith, G., 2015. Improving the
experience of hip fracture care: a multidisciplinary collaborative approach to implementing
evidence-based, person-centred practice. International Journal of Orthopaedic and Trauma
Nursing, 19(1), pp.24-35.
Dawe, R.J., Leurgans, S.E., Yang, J., Bennett, J.M., Hausdorff, J.M., Lim, A.S., Gaiteri, C.,
Bennett, D.A. and Buchman, A.S., 2017. Association between quantitative gait and balance
measures and total daily physical activity in community-dwelling older adults. The Journals
of Gerontology: Series A, 73(5), pp.636-642.
Doyle, C., Mertz-Hack, T. and Kern, J., 2017. Do mental activities such as crossword
puzzles, playing games, and reading reduce the risk of developing dementia?. Evidence-
Based Practice, 20(9), pp.13-14.
Eaton, S., Roberts, S. and Turner, B., 2015. Delivering person centred care in long term
conditions. Bmj, 350, p.h181.
Heller, T., Gibbons, H.M. and Fisher, D., 2015. Caregiving and family support interventions:
Crossing networks of aging and developmental disabilities. Intellectual and developmental
disabilities, 53(5), pp.329-345.
Kogan, A.C., Wilber, K. and Mosqueda, L., 2016. Person‐centered care for older adults with
chronic conditions and functional impairment: A systematic literature review. Journal of the
American Geriatrics Society, 64(1), pp.e1-e7.

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Lyons, D. and McCafferty, R., 2017. The Evergreen Programme Revisited-Making a
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Reeves, S., Pelone, F., Harrison, R., Goldman, J. and Zwarenstein, M., 2017.
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Australia. Christianity, Conflict, and Renewal in Australia and the Pacific, pp.161-182.
Stokes, G., 2017. Challenging behaviour in dementia: a person-centred approach.
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Valentijn, P., Boesveld, I., van der Klauw, D., Ruwaard, D., Struijs, J., Molema, J.,
Bruijnzeels, M. and Vrijhoef, H., 2015. Towards a taxonomy for integrated care: a mixed-
methods study. International journal of integrated care, 15(1).
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13th June 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/healthsystems/technical_brief_final.pdf
World Health Organisation. 2016. Community-based Health Services: a vital part of
Universal Health Coverage. Access date: 13th June 2019. Retrieved from:
http://www.searo.who.int/entity/health_situation_trends/discussion_paper_2016.pdf
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review. Aging & mental health, 20(4), pp.337-351.

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