Health Promotion and Maintenance in Nursing Professional Practice
The identified priority concept for this paper is health promotion and maintenance. Content under this concept includes antenatal care, self-care, the aging process, and newborn care. Health promotion and maintenance entails assisting individuals to achieve and maintain optimal health. The nurse assists individuals in identifying their target health status, identifying their strengths and needs, and supporting their path to attaining the full potential of their health and wellness (Phillips, 2019). In addition, the nurse helps individuals to promote their health through three levels of disease prevention: primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the concept of health promotion and maintenance in nursing professional practice.
Importance
The concept of health promotion and maintenance is significant to professional nursing practice since one of the roles of nurses surrounds health promotion, wellness, and recovery. Nurses provide personalized health education and self-care instructions to the patient. This begins with assessing a patient’s educational needs by asking about their health history and current medical diagnoses or problems (Phillips, 2019). By promoting and maintaining individuals’ health, nurses lower the number of patients seeking curative services and those hospitalized due to preventable diseases, thus lowering their workload and reducing associated fatigue and burnout. Health promotion and maintenance are also important to the general patient population because it helps to eliminate disease risk factors from the environment. It also guides individuals in lifestyle modifications to prevent disease, like smoking cessation, dietary changes, increased physical activity, and safe sexual practices (Phillips, 2019). The simple lifestyle changes help individuals prevent diseases that would otherwise have impaired their quality of life (QoL), caused morbidities and mortalities, and led to high medical costs. However, health promotion is more effective when it is tailored to an individual’s specific health risks, suitable to the situation, and responsive to the individual’s interest.
Failure to address health promotion and maintenance can adversely affect nursing practice since there will be increased incidences of preventable diseases. Nurses would have to manage many cases of diseases diagnosed in advanced stages. Besides, patients would be significantly affected since they would suffer from preventable diseases due to a lack of awareness of strategies to prevent diseases and promote health (Yousefi et al., 2019). They would also endure high morbidity and mortality from late diagnosis and treatment of diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and cancer, as well as poor health outcomes and QoL.
Healthcare Disparities, Inequalities, and Interventions
Pregnant women may be adversely impacted if the concept of health promotion and maintenance is unresolved. Health-promoting practices are an essential concept and determinant of health status in pregnancy. Health promotion in pregnancy entails educating expectant women about good hygiene, optimal nutrition, adequate rest, healthy lifestyle practices, complications of pregnancy, family planning, exclusive breastfeeding, and immunization. Fathnezhad-Kazemi & Hajian (2019) explain that many women identify safe approaches to promote a healthy pregnancy when they get pregnant and plan to make positive behavioral changes. However, some pregnant mothers fail to adopt healthy behaviors, which endanger the pregnancy as they face diseases that risk their pregnancy, like gestational diabetes, Anemia, hypertension, systemic infections, and puerperal endometritis. Besides, poor lifestyle practice affects the fetus outcomes due to preterm birth, low birth weight, and severe neonatal conditions that lead to neonatal mortality. Furthermore, failing to address nutrition in pregnancy is dangerous since it leads to a deficiency of macro- and micro-nutrients.
The healthcare disparities in health promotion for pregnant women can be addressed by applying a woman-focused approach to health promotion. The approach entails the nurse or midwife assessing a pregnant woman’s health promotion needs and supporting her to meet these needs. This leads the woman to her health agenda and actively engages them in promoting their health. Dayyani et al. (2021) found that midwives perceived that health promotion was provided when they paid attention to the competencies of a pregnant woman to take action or strengthen their self-efficacy. Thus, midwives and nurses caring for pregnant women need to learn how they can implement woman-focused care while at the same time providing preventative, evidence-based care. To furthe
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