Health Behavior Change is an important tool that can be applied to any health care setting to help patients modify health behaviors in order to produce a healthy outcome. Foundations of Health Services class incorporated this model into a project that allowed me to select a health behavior that I desired to modify for 12 weeks, and afterwards, evaluate my success or failure. At the end, I had to reflect about my actions and on my abilities to address the health behavior in order to be able to explain patients the importance of changing a lifestyle and the impact on their health outcome.
At the beginning I had set up an exercise routine every 4 days a week, 30 minutes a day, in order to increase stamina and at the same time reduce probabilities of health complications. Initially, I was motivated with the health behavior change, but over time I have begun to lose focus and motivation, until the point where I desisted to continue the challenge as originally established. I analyzed my situation and realized that patients experience similar circumstances, emotions and feelings. Patients start adherent to something, but after a certain amount of time their adherence levels decreases. It is not due necessary to the fact that they do not believe carrying on the health behavior change is not important however, it might have to do with changes in priorities and other factors that add up to this decline.
Becoming self-aware also made me realize that as a pharmacist, in order to
In this report it will investigate at least three recent health education campaigns and use them to explain two models of behaviour change. The three recent health education campaigns will be ‘Smoke Free’, ‘Change4Life’ and ‘FRANK’. The two models of behaviour change will be the theory of reasoned action and the stages of change model.
In everyday life many people develop habits, but it is never too late to attempt to change that bad habit to live a healthier life. For this behavioral change project, I was asked to choose a health behavior that I would like to change for the better. So, I decided that I wanted to increase the amount of water I was consuming each day. The standard recommendation on how much water an individual should consume is about 64 ounces daily. However how much a person should drink is more individualized then one might assume. Therefore, for this particular project my goal was to at least consume 64 ounces of water daily as a baseline starting point. I also had to consider days when I worked out. So, I decided that I would attempt to increase that amount
Explain two models of behaviour change that have been used in recent national health education campaigns.
Most people understand that an unhealthy lifestyle can lead to poor health, but their ability to make a change and modify their existing unhealthy behaviors can be difficult. Nurses have an opportunity to identify patients who are in need of motivational assistance in their practice.
The behaviour modified for this self-directed behaviour change project is smoking. Smoking was selected as the behaviour I wish to change because it is known that tobacco use is the leading cause of premature, preventable death and disease (Edwards, Bondy, Callaghan, & Mann, 2014). Smoking is a behaviour that has been recently initiated; I started smoking occasionally in August 2013 (one cigarette a few times a week) and intended to buy only the one pack. However over a period of several months, my smoking has increased. The rationale for this choosing this target behaviour is that it is still a relatively
The majority of people will decide to change their health behavior throughout their lifetime. The reasons for the change might be quite different from individual to individual. Some may be motivated to take action after experiencing a life threatening illness, while others are proactive and change their health behavior to decrease the risks of developing a potential disease. However, even if the reasons for the change are valid and well understood, there is a great possibility that one will not follow set goals long term. Stacy Carter, an assistant of professor and an author of the Social Validity Manual, expresses her opinion about people implementing a scientifically proven health behavior change treatment in their routine, “if it's something that is going to cause them a lot of effort, or is difficult to implement, then they probably are not going to use it for long” (Cranford, 2011). Use number superscript 1
Adhering to my health behavior change ended up being much more difficult than I thought it would end up being. I wanted to change my behavioral by going to the gym more often, more than three hours a week, and on a weekly basis. In the first week, I started off poorly and did not end up going to the gym once. The second week of my plan is when I was finally started to go to the gym and taking my plan seriously. I was available to meet my goal and spent three and a half hours at the gym that week. By week three, I only went for 2 hours that week at the gym.
In this part of my assignment I will describe 2 different theories of behaviour change in relation to health.
This behavior change project has become a huge part of my everyday life. I lost sight of how important staying in shape affects my overall mental state along with my physical well-being. Having a life that consists of so many activities such as going to school, working, and maintaining a full and happy relationship with the people I care about is hard to balance with just making time for myself. That is why keeping this three day a week workout regime over the past five weeks has been so important; it made me realize that I can make time to focus on just working on myself, and in turn, improve all other aspects of my life. Realizing of course that there are many people in this world that have real life health problems that they seek professional help for. These changes in their lives require a system or a theory that must be applied to develop a strategic an organized way to regulate or change their behavior.
Noreen and Janevic (2013) believe that the success of patients’ preventive and curative interventions depends on the individual’s willingness to take responsibility for and maintain the necessary behaviors. Sadly, studies have shown that there is poor adherence to recommended changes in lifestyle and behaviors including attending scheduled appointments for treatments (which are missed 35% of the time) and compliance prescribed medication. Due to the evidence of subpar participation in preventive care such as screening and immunization efforts, behavioral scientist have dedicated more research to studying and identifying what determines individual’s health behaviors. This is how individual theories of health behavioral change were developed.
The change models are change agents that could explain the ways of implementing a change process. These models explain the reason for the change, what to expect during the process and the way a change occurs. Thus, these models help one understand the various aspects of the change process (Agriculture & Life Sciences: Texas A & M University, n.d.). The transtheoretical model of health behavior change could explain my evidence-based practice (EBP) project implementation plan.
Boskey (2014) concludes that a person’s willingness to change their health behaviors includes perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived barriers, and cues to action and self-efficacy. For example, Carpenter (2010) report the Health Belief Model stipulates that a change may occur if individuals see an adverse health outcome to be severe and perceive them to be vulnerable to it. Other perceptions include benefits of behaviors that reduce the likelihood of that outcome to be high, and the barriers to adopting those behaviors low (Carter, 2010). Furthermore, the HBM addresses the relationship between a person’s beliefs and behaviors. It provides a way of understanding and predicting how clients will behave about their health and how they will comply with healthcare therapies (Boskey, 2014).
Behaviour Modification is very important in many health related behaviour problems and this can range from alcohol abuse, tobacco abuse, hypertension, diabetes, overeating disorders. Health-related behaviours are the very important determinants of health care and also quality of life. The field of behavioral informatics has major potential to optimize several interventiaons through monitoring, assessing, and modeling behaviour in support of providing tailored and timely interventions (Pavel, 2015). Improving health-realted behaviours will be an important aspect for preventive health care. Behaviour interventions play an important role in mitigating costs, loss of quality of life and increased morbidity which is caused by behaviours (Pavel,
On individual level changes in health promotion and ecological approaches target and influence multiple health behaviors. This is because the individuals living in the environment are embedded in temporary change of behaviors. Therefore it is very important to consider ecological approaches, changing health behaviors and environmental factors while designing operational and supportable health promotion plans.
An individual's attitude towards his health influences his capacity to maintain an optimum level of health, prevent illness or recover from a disease. Understanding patient's attitude towards his condition is the key to establishing an effective health-related program for health promotion, disease prevention and disease management. Hence, different health behavior theories have emerged. All of these are designed to help the patient and his family to facilitate learning, adjustment and behavior change to improve his quality of life. ( Butts & Rich, 2011)