Teachers' views on curriculum development in health promotion in two Finnish polytechnics

Student-driven partnerships enhancing oral health literacy

ISSUE ADDRESSED

This brief report documents teaching practice that has facilitated deeper connections between Bachelor of Oral Health (BOH) students at The University of Adelaide and community support agencies to promote increased health literacy and confidence to seek care amongst marginalised populations. The aim was to increase the capacity of marginalised groups "to access, understand, appraise and apply information to make effective decisions about health and health care" (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Hlth Lit; 2014. Available from: https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/standards/nsqhs-standards/partnering-consumers-standard/health-literacy. Accessed January 21, 2020).

METHODS

The health promotion curriculum in the BOH course at The University of Adelaide encourages students to focus on health literacy, equity and partnerships in the development of several small targeted health promotion programs. Students co-create, implement and evaluate these programs, engaging community groups, supportive partners and industry stakeholders in a range of unique ways.

RESULTS

Sustainable relationships have been established and are growing with partner organisations. As these relationships strengthen, so too does the trust, creative licence, innovation and promotion of the students' involvement directly or indirectly with community. That leads to more frequent touch points with community and greater community buy-in. As familiarity increases, so too does community health literacy and confidence to enter oral health care pathways.

CONCLUSION

Strategically planned activity outside of dental setting has the potential to draw community members and dental service providers together, with the enhancement of health literacy and access amongst at-risk populations, an important by-product. SO WHAT?: There seems great potential for further benefits to be realised by oral health students and members of the public when there is multi-stakeholder involvement in co-created health promotion initiatives, that see students further engage with community outside clinical environments.

Challenges and demands in the population-based work of public health nurses

AIMS

Government programs and the Norwegian Directorate of Health give public health nurses in Norway an explicit role in population-based health promotion and disease-prevention work. The aim of this paper is to explore Norwegian public health nurses' experiences with population-based work.

METHODS

A phenomenological hermeneutic approach was adopted, involving face-to-face interviews with a purposeful sample of 23 public health nurses from urban and rural districts in two counties in Norway.

RESULTS

Three themes were identified: the predominance of work at the individual level, a lack of resources, and adherence to administrative directives. The interviews revealed that the public health nurses were mostly occupied with individual problem-solving activities. Population-based work was hardly prioritized, mostly because of a lack of resources and a lack of recognition of the population-based role of public health nurses.

CONCLUSIONS

The study indicates contradictions between the public health nursing practice related to population-based work and the direction outlined by the government and the public health nursing curriculum, which may mean that the public health nursing role is not sufficiently clarified. The implementation of practice models and administrative directives and resources, as well as an explicit emphasis on population health in public health nursing education, can contribute to increased population-based interventions. Greater knowledge of and emphasis on population-based work in public health nursing are needed.

Conceptions of health promotion held by pre-registration student nurses in four schools of nursing in New Zealand

A research project conducted in four nursing schools in New Zealand presents an account of student nurses' conceptions of health promotion. Focus groups of six to ten pre-registration nursing students were conducted in each of the schools of nursing. The findings indicated that the student nurses had difficulty clearly articulating the concept of health education and health promotion. The student nurses focused on individuals. The main strategy they used was the giving of information. This strategy was in keeping with a traditional approach to health promotion. However a number of students did include empowering interpersonal strategies in their health promotion activities. Many of the students demonstrated an awareness of the impact of economic determinants on health but did not have the support or opportunity to address these. None of the students included addressing the political determinants of health in their discussion of the health promoting role of the nurse.

Nursing students' attitudes to health promotion to: implications for teaching practice

For several decades now the World Health Organization has indicated the need for a reorientation of the health services away from focusing solely on illness and disease to one that considers both disease prevention and health promotion. Successive publications that guide public health policy both nationally and internationally reiterate the need for health promotion and the principles of health for all to become integral to the fabric of health care delivery. The role of the nurse as health promoters is well recognized. However despite acknowledgement by professional nursing bodies and nurse educators that health promotion forms a central tenet of undergraduate nurse education curricula, there are varied approaches to teaching and learning and little formal evaluation of the consequences of approaches taken. The aims of this study are to identify current health promotion curricular content within the Irish undergraduate nursing programme context; to measure nursing students' attitudes towards health promotion and to examine nursing students' reported lifestyle behaviours.

Reviewing health promotion in nursing education

The [World Health Organisation, 2000. Nurse and Midwives for Health: A WHO European Strategy for Nursing and Midwifery Education. WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen] European Strategy for Nursing and Midwifery Education calls for the explicit inclusion and application of health promotion in all nursing curricula. Prior to this strategy, and subsequently, studies have explored the nature and extent of health promotion in nursing education. This article extensively reviews this body of literature. Overall, the literature, both included in this review and its supporting discussion, presents a picture suggesting that the call for effective inclusion of health promotion has in many cases gone unheeded. The literature also identifies that the educational delivery of broader elements of health promotion is muted in comparison to the 'traditional' constructs of health education. Considerations for wider reform, born out of the literature, are presented.