Health Promotion Is A Key Element Of The Nurse's Role

The American Journal of Health Promotion defines “Health Promotion as the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to move towards a state of optimal health, which is a balance of the physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual health.” The main purpose of health promotion in nursing practice is that nurses have a major role to play in order to guide individuals to make healthy decisions by including their patients and families, communities that further form organizations. So it is essential for nurses have thorough knowledge and information about health promotion theories and models. Nurses must possess the skill to implement and upgrade the effectiveness of evidence based interventions and critical work on

Ruddick, F. (2013) ‘Promoting mental health and wellbeing’, Nursing Standard, 27 (24), pp.35-39 is the article that I found most beneficial and relevant that will enable me to explain and analyse research or evaluate ]my future role and professional practice as a mental health nurse in promoting the mental health and wellbeing of Patients. It is vital that all nurses see this as imperative and an aspect that should be prioritised alongside the other as they inevitably affect each other and act as preventative measures that will avert associated health conditions.

“Mental health and wellbeing can positively affect almost every area of a person’s life: education, employment, family and relationships. It can help people achieve their potential, realise their ambitions, cope with adversity, work productively and contribute to their community and society. Promoting mental health and wellbeing has multiple benefits. It improves health outcomes, life expectancy, productivity and educational and economic outcomes and reduces violence and crime.” (The Department of Health, 2010)

The purpose of this assignment is to choose one case study and to identify and critically analyse the psychological issues contained in the case study. The author is then asked to describe the approach and possible interventions between psychology and your discipline to improve the quality of life of the specific person. For this assignment the chosen case study is that of Charlotte Z. According to the World Health Organisation (2016) the role of the nurse is to provide autonomous and collaborate care to individuals, families and communities by promoting health, preventing illness and providing care for the ill, disabled and dying. A nurse assesses patient’s physical, emotional and psychological needs and, through goal setting, the use of

Significantly, “Nurses play a huge role in illness prevention and health promotion. We, as nurses assume the role of ambassadors of wellness. Yes, I do believe that nurses play just as an important role in caring for the well as they do in caring for the sick. Perhaps caring for the well is the more important role. In this day and age of budget cuts, cost reduction and staffing shortages, health promotion makes sense. If we can preserve wellness, we reduce the number of times a person needs to enter the health-care system, thus reducing costs.” (Hartford, 2009, The role of the nurse in health promotion section, para. 1)

Health promotion has become priority issues and future directions for health professions from a world perspective. By focusing on individuals, families, communities, and the environments in which people live, work, and play the health care professionals today are vital links for promoting national and international health. Nurses today are required to have sufficient vision and expertise to provide the health of their clients. With leadership, creativity, and determination, the nurse can establish a healthier future for all people around the globe. According to

The safety of patients can be compromised if the work environment leads to job dissatisfaction. “It impacts everything from the safety of patients and their caregivers to job satisfaction. Studies consistently show how work environment issues, such as nurse staffing, are linked to patient outcomes, length of stay, and the chance of death. ANA supports a healthy work environment for all nurses and patients”, (American Nurses Association, 2017)

Health promotion is defined as the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health (World Health Organization, n.d.). This means that not only are they looking at what they can do as an individual to better their health, but also how different environmental and social factors can better their health. This article is going to focus on the purpose of health promotion, the role and responsibilities of nurses in health promotion, as well as, comparing the three different levels of health promotion and prevention.

Mental health is considered as an essential part of health in which an individual recognizes their full capacity to deal with pressures that surround them, work productively and be of positive influence to society. World Health Organization [WHO] (2008) reported that Australia contributes an estimate of 29.4% of neuropsychiatric on the global burden of disease. In 2015 the revised Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation [ANMF] Policy states that the distribution of health care in mental health nursing requires skills and expertise for them to deliver a complete, broad and universal mental health care to affected individuals. Thus, the sustenance of the mental health nursing should be given comprehensive, intensive and sufficient support. This research will explore the perspectives of psychiatric nurses from different facilities regarding their reason in choosing mental health nursing and remaining as mental health nurse (MHN). Findings will be used as a reference for the retention and recruitment of mental health nursing.

Theorell, Ahlberg-Hulten, Jodka, Sigala, and da la Torre, (1993) assessed blood pressure, emotion, and job strain in female nurses at work and during leisure time. They reported significant correlations between job strain and Diastolic Blood Pressure, but only during work hours, and no relationship between mood and

It was argued that organizations providing supportive and challenging working environment to meet employees needs using job resources were more likely to promote employees’ engagement and facilitate teamwork (Van Bogaert, Wouters). Previous empirical studies revealed that social support such as co-workers and supervisors, and job resources including learning opportunities and autonomy have motivational potentials to decrease cynicism while promoting excellent performance, job satisfaction and quality of care (Othman & Nasurdin, 2013; Van Bogaert, van Heusden, Timmermans, & Franck, 2014). Poghosyan et al. (2010) reported that “poor practice environment- in the form of low perceived support from front-line and executive-level managers, low levels of human and material resources for providing care, limited resources for quality improvement and staff development, and poor relationships between nursing and other disciplines have also been linked to a variety of poor patient and nurse outcomes” (p.289). Bakker et al. (2014) argued that nurses who are surrounded by many job resources are able to deal with the demanding working environment compared to those who

The importance of self-care for nurses is a necessity in order to be effective in their role, but it is a tool that is often under-utilized. Nurses are often trained to understand the importance of caring for others. It is imbedded in their brains. In healthcare, self-care is any activity we do purposefully in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health (Blum, 2014, p.1). Self-care can help a nurse cope with common stressors such as feeling overworked, overwhelmed, undervalued, or frustrated, which can often lead to exhaustion, tension, and fatigue. In today’s world, nurses experience a higher amount of stress due to increase in work hours, work responsibilities, and increase in patient loads. Research studies have shown that there is value in educating nurses about self-care not only to the individual but to the organization as well. There are several self-care techniques that can be easily learned and implemented over a short period of time that can make a positive impact. Nurses are often drawn to the medical profession because of their compassion, and dedication to helping others, but one must remember to care for themselves so they can effectively care for others.

Nursing is a career full of stressors. Every day nurses deal with some type of stress and they can become emotionally drained. Nurses are the support system for the patients and their families, they watch patients suffer, and sometimes they even care for patients who are terminally ill and dying. The modern world of health care and tightening budgets are resulting in additional work-related stressors such as barriers to providing optimal care, increasingly complex needs of patients, short acute care lengths of stays, the need for increased knowledge of ever-changing technology, nursing shortages, poor staffing, long work hours, limited resources, and feelings of lack of control (Smith, 2014, p. 119). The above stressors can put nurses at

Occupational stress causes emotional and oft times harmful response to the demands of the activity of mental health nursing and the nurse’s emotional capability. The environments in which mental health nurses are employed often generate high levels of stress due to the nature of the consumers being treated therein. Stress related disorders do occur among all nurses, in various hospital departments and in community nursing, but in particular amongst mental health nurses even though they are trained specifically to cope with this phenomenon. Unfortunately the presence of high levels of stress in a mental nurse’s everyday working life may lead to emotional withdrawal and the development of the insidious burnout syndrome which may not be recognised immediately by the affected nurse.

In addition to a sufficient supply of nurses, producing a healthy work environment for nurses is vital for the recruitment , safety, and retention of nurses. There is a growing awareness of the relationship between nurses’ work environment, patient outcomes and system performance. There is also strong evidence indicating that a healthy work environment not only proves financially beneficial but also reduce absenteeism, lost productivity and yields improved patient outcomes (AHRQ, BMJ). However, without an understanding of the contributing factors to unhealthy work environments and a commitment to change, poor work environments, adverse patient events and outcomes, along with high nurse turnover and burnout will ensue. Literature Review