Health Promotion and Nurses

When the topic of health promotion is brought up in any clinical setting it is nearly impossible to have the discussion without factoring in the importance of nurses. It is indisputable that nurses represent an ever-growing presence in the medical field, and that their promotion of health concerns and education of patients is vital. To deliver effective patient care, nurses must have an understanding of the importance cultural variations play in promoting any health solutions. Cultural variations not only define interacting with patients from different nationalities, but also define patients from different religious, socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. Creating a health promotion campaign while keeping cultural differences in mind can completely alter the plan. As research has advanced in the field of nursing as well as health promotions, it has been made clear that to be effective nurses and all health professionals have to assess the cultural background of patients (Kemppainen, Tossavainen & Turunen, 2012). The significance this reality poses to the nursing profession is immense because it affects how every interaction with patients play out. No effective health promotion campaign or education plan can survive if it does not account for the nuances of different groups within the community nurses serve.

As the world becomes more connected and nations become more and more diverse, health care professional have to take these considerations into account when making decisions. When a health care promotion is being considered there is one main point in the mind of the health care professionals- best possible patient care and education. The future of nursing is growing and the professionals in this field must understand and communicate health promotions with evidence-based practices on their minds (Chiverton, Votava & Tortoretti, 2003). Nurses must understand that the same topic given to two different cultural backgrounds will take on completely different meanings and implications. If the audience is not taken into account before the health promotion effort begins, then there is no guarantee that it will educate or serve the patients in a meaningful way. Understanding how health-seeking individuals are motivated by their cultural groups will help nurses understand the most efficient method of communicating with each patient group. Research done by Robinson (2013) at Wayne State University relayed this belief by stating that, “Humans have natural health-seeking behaviors that are influenced by culture” (p. 15). This statement shines light directly onto the core of the issue by stating in plain and clear language that patients have health care beliefs that are based not on their actual health care first, but rather on their culture first and their healthcare in relation to it. This means that nurses have to work that much harder to reach target groups that have cultural reasons for rejecting what the healthcare field has deemed to be the best course of action.

The significance of creating health care promotions that are culturally tailored to meet the needs of patient demographics is immeasurable. The aforementioned quote by Robinson is at the heart of what nurses need to be considering at all times. With this consideration constantly dictating how they should interact with and address health promotions nurses should know their demographics. Although it may appear daunting, there are ways to address the significance of this concern. Nurses should at all times be making efforts to know their patient demographics and to seek out assistance when they believe they need help creating culturally meaningful health promotion and education plans. Nurses should create educational plans that are culture based. It is possible for nurses to have a head start to understand who their main patient base will be within most practice settings. This again brings up the significance of understanding cultural approaches and differences in creating health care promotions for nurses to relay to their patients. The nurse who will be interacting with a population of geriatric patients should be aware of this fact in advance and can prepare accordingly on how to best communicate information or data to this group to help lead them to the best healthcare decision. This is also true if the patients are younger and in actuality need their guardians to make their healthcare decisions for them. In that scenario the nurse must be adequately prepared to speak about difficult decisions with parents that may have been addressed in a completely different manner than with the older patient set. Cultural considerations with respect to faith diversity may be one of the most important and sensitive cultural areas to tread into because they touch on a subject that many times may be at odds with the medical course of actions nurses may want their patients take.

Different religious backgrounds will view health promotion topics from angles that are not taking into consideration just the medical information being relayed. It may be easy to disregard this and push forward with a health promotion, but all this will do is to ensure a lower success rate of the promotion. Another big cultural difference to keep in mind when attempting to educate patients on a health promotion is that of socio-economic background. This is one that can easily be overlooked, but it can impact a patient’s acceptance and processing of your health promotion as much as any other cultural difference. Different socio-economic backgrounds within the same country can view medical concerns independently of the actual medical data. It is not important to attempt to incorporate all of the intricate sociological reasons for this into a health promotion, rather, it is important to understand that it does exist and that nurses should pay special attention to the socio-economic breakdown of the patient demographic they are serving. All of these breakdowns are “culture” differences, and each must be considered when deciding on how to best teach or promote a healthcare concern. The types of cultural backgrounds that will have to be considered by nurses are far greater in number than can be mentioned here. There are considerations to be taken into account when patients are from different countries as well as tribal groups. Even within countries regional differences will require ethnic affiliations to be considered for there to be significant health promotions created.

There needs to be a more streamlined method to practices and individual nurses to obtain the proper training to prepare them to take into consideration cultural differences. Despite the fact that cultural variations are so important to creating meaningful health promotions, understanding the topic is ranked low when ranking a nurse’s competency (Kemppainen et al., 2012). Meaningful health promotions across cultural differences is an imperative step in creating health care education systems to best serve the patients nurses come into contact with. Culturally approaching the creation of health care promotions ensures that nurses are getting the best message across to each patient group. Rather than focusing on one method of teaching, nurses should carefully consider the demographic of their patients in mind long before they are faced with relaying a health promotion to a patient, or a patient’s family. HPV vaccination and its cultural implication in relation to nurses creating health promotions and education templates is a perfect example of the importance of cultural considerations. It is vital to the success of HPV vaccination promotions that nurses are heavily involved in the daily face to face education of patients and their families (Chan et al., 2011). When considering HPV health promotions across cultural backgrounds nurses will take into account: age, religion, parental beliefs, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnic differences and nationality, just to name a few. Taking into account the many cultural backgrounds that nurses will face with this one promotion alone strengthens my belief that streamlined training is imperative. Any given health promotion that nurses work on could face as many challenges as the HPV vaccination promotion. Therefore, it is my belief that understanding cultural approaches to health promotion is the only way to effectively educate patients in clinical settings.

Nurses play a huge role in the success and failure of health promotions and patient education on a daily basis. Cultural approaches to health promotions may be one of the biggest factors in those successes and failures. Understanding, acknowledging and allowing these cultural approaches to be in the forefront of health promotion creation will translate into a nurse workforce that will be able to serve its demographic much more effectively as time goes on. Cultural diversity is increasing not only in the USA, but around the world. This increase in cultural variations translates into the need to move away from any belief that a health promotion can rely on medical research and facts alone. While it may seem that the actual tangible medical data on the effectiveness of a course of treatment or health promotion should be enough, many times it is not. Cultural variables carry more weight in some cultures than any amount of data or evidence possible could hope to do. At first this may seem like a frustrating reality, but in essence it can be combatted by nurses educating themselves on their patient as more than just individuals to be broken down into definable medical categories. Taking a patient as a whole allows better individual and community relationships and understanding between nurses and patients. Better relationships between nurses and those communities they serve can only help foster higher levels of trust. Health promotions will increasingly need to be centered on getting as many patients as possible to follow the course of action that is the target of the promotion, and trust will assist in this goal. This can be achieved as long as a cultural approach is used in creating health promotions and education materials.

References

Chiverton, P.A., Votava, K.M., Tortoretti, D.M. (2003). The future role of nurses in health promotion. American Journal of Health Promotion, 18(2), 192-194.

Chan, C.Y.Z, Lam, C.H., Lam, D.Y., Lee, L.Y., Ng, K.K., Wong, M.L. (2011). A Qualitative Study on HPV Vaccination from a Nursing Perspective in Hong Kong. Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention, 12, 2539-2545.

Kemppainen, V., Tossavainen, K., Turunen, H. (2012). Nurses' roles in health promotion practice: an integrative review. Health Promotion International, September 2012.

Robinson, S.G. (2013). The relevancy of Ethnography to Nursing Research. Nursing Science Quarterly, 26, 14-19.