Health Promotion in Nursing Practice

Health promotion in nursing practice has become a priority with the ever changing healthcare system and the nurse’s roles and responsibilities are always changing with it. It is crucial with the passing of the Affordable Care Act that nurses promote health to their patients and community. The focus has switched from treatment of disease, illness and injury to the prevention of disease, illness and injury. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health promotion as “the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behavior towards a wide range of social and environmental intervention (www.who.int/topics/health_promotion/).” In this paper we will discuss the importance of nurse’s roles, explain the implementation methods of health care promotion and compare the three levels of health promotion prevention.
Health promotion is more important today than ever before and the focus must be on teaching people how to remain healthy. Today nurses are playing an important role in promoting public health. Historically, the focus of nurses on health promotion has been on disease prevention and changing patient behaviors with respect to their health. Because of today’s society and the changing healthcare system nurses play a variety of roles in health promotion.
One of the major roles that nurses play in the care of a patient is advocate. As advocates nurses assist the patients to obtain what they need and are entitled to from the health care system. Nurses should also ensure that all patients receive quality, appropriate, and cost-effective care. Nurses are also care-managers, consultants, deliverer of services and educators. To be effective as an educator, the nurse must determine their patients learning style and decipher their responses in an