Health promotion as a primary health nurse Assignment Sample

Introduction - Health promotion as a primary health nurse Assignment 

Get Free Samples Written by our Top-Notch Subject Expert Writers known for providing the Best Assignment Help Services in Australia

Primary health care is a medical service, which is provided outside the healthcare centres, including schools, aged care, community health, generalpractice, and primary healthcare centres (APNA, 2020). It plays a crucial role in keeping people healthy by offering effective care as well as health promotion for keeping people safe. The thesis statement of this essay is to choose and examine a primary health nurse role and based on that considering a potential healthcare issue. This essay selects Health Promotion as a primary health nurse role and regarding the health issue, it chooses hypertension issue among Australian people. 

Focus of this section is to highlight the selected primary health nurse role and give a brief description of it. Due to the ageing population of Australia and their deteriorating health, a robust and accessible primary healthcare setting is crucial for keeping them safe as well as out of hospital premises. Primary health care is first level of contact that families, communities, and individuals have with their healthcare system. In Australia, it includes personal care along with prevention of illness, community development, and health promotion. Additionally, it involves interconnecting principles of access, empowerment, equity, inter-sectoral collaboration, and community-self-determination. 

This essay has selected Health Promotion as a primary health nurse role. Research has suggested that nurses assess safety and quality of the physical environment and these assessments are conducted for detecting risk factors at home. They are the individuals who offer hands-on care and one of the most crucial roles that nurses’ play in health promotion is that of educators (Iriarte?Roteta et al. 2020). Moreover, Maier et al. (2018) explained that regarding health promotion, nurses mainly plan and participate within community health education as they educate their clients upon action for promoting and maintaining health, for example, weight loss, diet, and hypertension issues. Nurses spend the majority of their time with their patients and give anticipatory guidance regarding nutrition, medications, dietary, and safety.

Additionally, Swanson et al. (2020) agreed that nurses play a critical role to deliver primary healthcare services as well as provide rise of social and health inequalities globally. All these activities and roles strengthen the primary healthcare system through increasing health promotion as well as access to care. Additionally, regarding health promotion, they inform clients about proper immunization schedules as well as integrate complementary therapies in activities of health promotion regarding wellness of clients.

Now this section explores some demographic characteristics of a particular client group and then predicts relatable potential healthcare issues. In this case, the clients of the community nurses are men because research has found that in Australia, men are more probable to have uncontrolled hypertension as compared to women. Additionally, according to the Australian Government, one in four men have uncontrolled hypertension, whereas, one in five women have uncontrolled hypertension issues in Australia (Australian Government, 2019). Moreover, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that, in 2015, approximately 21% of hypertension issues have been identified because of a high sodium diet, which is higher in men (23 percent) as compared to women (17 percent). In the context of primary health care, men need more help related to health promotion so that they can manage their hypertension issues. 

Lastly, this section aims to justify how primary healthcare nurses can use the health promotion strategies in Ottawa Charter for addressing the hypertension issue on behalf of the client. According to WHO, the first international conference on Health Promotion was held in Ottawa in 1986 and that represents this Charter regarding action for achieving Health for All by year 2000 (World Health Organisation, 2021). This Charter identifies three Health Promotion strategies as Advocate, Enable, and Mediate. Iriarte?Roteta et al. (2020) discussed that Ottawa Charter was an effective approach for addressing population health in response to criticism of the biomedical nature of the health system. This Charter highlights the involvement of the health sector with broader political, social, physical, and economic focus while pursuing five key areas such as making healthy public policies, strengthening community actions, making supportive environments, health service reorientation and developing personal skills (World Health Organisation, 2021).

However, in this case, the selected key action is making a supportive environment regarding health. Based on this key action, this section has proposed some interventions for primary health nurses so that they can use them for reducing and improving the health outcomes of hypertension patients in Australia. The proposed interventions are stated and described below.

Selecting a proper healthy diet and meal can help people to control their hypertension issues. Regarding creating a supportive health environment, nurses can recommend their selected client group to start a healthy diet that will incorporate plenty of vegetables and fruits. According to Carey et al. (2018), consuming a healthy diet can decrease BP and a healthy diet including whole grains, vegetables, lots of fruits, lean protein, nuts as well as low-fat dairy items. This intervention can be proven successful because having a healthy diet is beneficial for health and successfully reduces BP. With help of this intervention, nurses can ensure a supportive environment for patients because they can tell patients’ family members to support them to maintain a healthy diet. 

Besides maintaining a healthy diet, nurses can encourage their client group to do regular exercise. Physical activities help to keep a healthy weight as well as lower BP. According to research, people with hypertension issues require moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for 2.30 hours a week. Regarding aerobic exercise, people can consider brisk walking as it can help harder the heartbeats and utilise more oxygen than normal. Unger et al. (2020) elaborated that physical activities are beneficial for reducing high BP and improves endothelial function. Hence, this intervention is very likely to become successful because regular exercise makes the heart stronger and can pump more blood with lower effort. As an outcome force upon arteries reduces, which also lowers blood pressure. 

Next, improving hypertension issues, nurses can encourage smoking cessation and limiting alcohol consumption. Evidence has found that consuming excessive alcohol can increase blood pressure levels. When blood vessels are narrow, the heart works harder to push blood around the body and it increases the BP. In case of controlling BP, men cannot take more than 2 drinks a day or below 2 drinks and this intervention is likely to be successful because if the client group decreases alcohol consumption they will produce less cortisol, which is responsible for raining BP (Roerecke et al. 2017). Additionally, they can tell their families to support smoking cessation and limiting alcohol consumption by creating a proper environment of smoke and alcohol-free. 

Lastly, nurses can support community involvement, for example, partnership with the community groups, for instance religious, civic, and philanthropic organizations that provide focused orientation towards health needs of the diverse population (Carey et al. 2018). With help of community involvement can prevent and control hypertension as it provides educational messages as well as lifestyle support related to hypertension. 

In conclusion, this essay aimed to illustrate one specific primary health nurse role and then predict a potential healthcare issue based on the demographic characteristics. Additionally, it has aimed to provide some intervention regarding selected health issues by considering the key actions highlighted by Ottawa Charter. From thisentirediscussion, it can be concluded that nurses play a huge role in the context of primary health care. They consider several aspects for a patient's health promotion. Since this essay has selected hypertension issues, the health promotion strategies can help primary healthcare nurses to improve the health outcomes of selected client groups. 

References

APNA, (2020).What is primary health care nursing? https://www.apna.asn.au/profession/what-is-primary-health-care-nursing

Australian Government, (2019).High blood pressure. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/risk-factors/high-blood-pressure/contents/high-blood-pressure

Carey, R. M., Muntner, P., Bosworth, H. B., &Whelton, P. K. (2018).Prevention and control of hypertension: JACC health promotion series. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 72(11), 1278-1293.https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.jacc.2018.07.008

Iriarte?Roteta, A., Lopez?Dicastillo, O., Mujika, A., Ruiz?Zaldibar, C., Hernantes, N., Bermejo?Martins, E., &Pumar?Méndez, M. J. (2020).Nurses’ role in health promotion and prevention: A critical interpretive synthesis. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(21-22), 3937-3949.https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15441

Maier, C. B., Budde, H., & Buchan, J. (2018). Nurses in expanded roles to strengthen community-based health promotion and chronic care: policy implications from an international perspective; A commentary. Israel journal of health policy research, 7(1), 1-4.https://doi.org/10.1186/s13584-018-0257-5

Roerecke, M., Kaczorowski, J., Tobe, S. W., Gmel, G., Hasan, O. S., &Rehm, J. (2017). The effect of a reduction in alcohol consumption on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Public Health, 2(2), e108-e120.https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30003-8

Swanson, M., Wong, S. T., Martin?Misener, R., & Browne, A. J. (2020).The role of registered nurses in primary care and public health collaboration: a scoping review. Nursing open, 7(4), 1197-1207.https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.496

Unger, T., Borghi, C., Charchar, F., Khan, N. A., Poulter, N. R., Prabhakaran, D., ...&Schutte, A. E. (2020). 2020 International Society of Hypertension global hypertension practice guidelines. Hypertension, 75(6), 1334-1357.https://doi.org/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.120.15026

World Health Organisation, (2021).The 1st International Conference on Health Promotion, Ottawa, 1986. https://www.who.int/teams/health-promotion/enhanced-wellbeing/first-global-conference

World Health Organisation, (2021).Health promotion action means. https://www.who.int/teams/health-promotion/enhanced-wellbeing/first-global-conference/actions