Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION IN NURSING PRACTICE
Health Promotion in Nursing Practice
Grand Canyon University
Family-Centered Health Promotion
NRS-429V
April Herrera
April 14, 2012
Health Promotion in Nursing Practice
To evaluate health promotion, people need to know what health promotion truly is. Health promotion has been defined by the World Health Organization as, “the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health.”(The Bangkok Charter for health promotion in a globalized world, 2005)
Health promotion is educating the community about healthy choices that they can understand and utilize. ...view middle of the document...
The nurse can do this by sending e-mails or newsletters home, or providing activities on making healthy snacks (Croghan, 2011).
Advocating; the school nurse must get involved in school policies and focus on health promotion. The nurse can support and encourage physical education in the curriculum by increasing its classes. The nurse may allow snack machines that contain only healthy snacks, such as trail mixes, or dried fruit snacks (Croghan, 2011).
Mediating; the school nurse is involved with other organizations or partnerships to promote health in school. The nurse should be an active member of the school board and town council. Ensuring that children are seen as the priority, an example of this is no smoking near school campus or in any area in close proximity to the school where children could see (Croghan, 2011).
Health promotion has different levels of delivery depending on your audience. Primary is seeing a potential problem and educating to prevent the problem. Secondary is educating to stop behaviors that are directly linked to a disease process. Tertiary is educating to live to the fullest with a disease process that has taken its course.
A school nurse deals with multiple health problems in all the above stages. One of the most impactful is obesity. By tracking student’s weight and body mass index the nurse is able to intervene at all stages.
Primary phase would be educating students, facility, and families on the importance of eating healthy and exercising daily. These tactics would hopefully establish a foundation of life long habits of making healthy food choices.
Secondary stage would be implemented for the children that are in the category of being overweight and seen as making unhealthy eating choices. The nurse would need to set-up a monitoring system that would encourage the student to be healthier. In this stage with children their emotional state and home life would need to be taken into consideration. Assessing this would be the nurse’s responsibility. A food diary and activity log would be helpful for...
