Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION IN NURSING CARE
Health Promotion in Nursing Care
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Family Health Promotion
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Feb 12, 2010
Health Promotion in Nursing Care
Now more than ever it is critical for nurses to be at the forefront of health promotion. With health care costs increasing year after year and the number of uninsured or underinsured increasing, individuals need to take more responsibility and control of their health (Overview of the uninsured in the United States: an analysis of the 2005 current population survey, 2005). “The World Health Organization stated that participation is essential to sustain health promotion” (Kalina, Haag, & De Paul Brown, 2008). The World Health Organization (WHO) further defined health promotion “…as the process of enabling individuals to increase control over the determinants of health and thereby improve their own health” (Kalina, Haag, & De Paul Brown, 2008). Health promotion empowers individuals to take control of their health through disease prevention or chronic disease management. “Disease prevention is defined as protecting as many people as possible from the harmful consequences of threat to health” (Cummings, Francescutti, Predy, & Cummings, 2006). In order for nurses to be successful at promoting health, they must first recognize that health is multidimensional and often influenced by factors outside an individual’s control. Physicians are unable to do it all. That is why it is important to have nurses or physician extenders to fill the gap as patient advocates, care managers, and educators.
Health promotion involves nurses promoting physical, mental, and spiritual health. Health promotion does not include focusing on illness, but rather encouraging and educating the patient and their family to prevent illness. Health care is evolving and changing from a model geared towards responding to acute and chronic disease to prevention. There are three distinct...