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The Nurses’ Role in Health Promotion

Nurses have the opportunity to make a positive impact in the lives of their patients through positive health promotion. Health promotion as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) is “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions” (WHO, 2014, 1st paragraph). Through thoughtful and thorough patient education, nurses are able to educate their patients on a variety of topics related to the improvement of their health and overall wellness. Nurses also play a key role in the primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of disease in multiple patient populations. Promotion of health is both an active and passive process and requires that nurses be proactive in their goal of improving the health of their patients through appropriate nursing interventions and actions. Through appropriate and thoughtful health promotion nurses are given the chance to improve the quality of their patients lives all across their lifespan, from conception through death ((Edelman & Mandle, 2010)

Health Promotion and Prevention

With the current changes affecting the United State's health care system health promotion will begin to play a larger role than ever before in nursing practice. In addition empowering patients to take charge of their health, health promotion also assists with lowering the cost of health care by improving the health of the general population thereby reducing the need for many expensive health care treatments (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). Nurses work to improve the health of the nation and provide health promotion through both passive and acti...

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...ry prevention strives to assist the patient with maintaining as much of their current level of health as possible (Edelman & Mandle, 2010).

As the culture of health care changes " Emphasis is shifting from acute, hospital-based care to preventive, community-based care, which is provided in nontraditional health care settings in the community" (Edelman & Mandle, p. 19). With these changes nurses will find themselves playing a larger role than ever in the health promotion of their patients. Community health programs with a focus on nurse directed patient education will be imperative as we move forward to ensure the needs of the growing patient population will continue to be met. It is an exciting time in health care and the strength of nurses is only beginning to be recognized, there are so many great things to come on well planned nursing intervention at a time.