health education

The nurse plays an important role in a patient’s state of well-being by providing health education to promote a healthy lifestyle. One model that can assist the nurse to educate a person to improve their health is the Health Belief Model.  This model is valuable in helping the nurse decide if the patient is ready to make a behavior change.  This model is based on how the patient perceives the importance of the change to their personal health and lifestyle.

There are several components that provide guidance to evaluate a person’s perceived status of health, or possibility of disease, to make the right plan of care, they include:  the person’s readiness for change, how much the person values their health compared to their lifestyle, their sensitivity to a disease, their perceived seriousness of the disease, risk factors, perceived benefits of health and barriers to making an improvement to their health (Edelman, Kudzma, Mandle, 2014).   This model is favorable for predicting if a person is ready to make a behavior change and if they can stick with the change.

The nurse will need to assess that the patient is ready to make a change.  The nurse can encourage this by explaining the benefits of the change and by presenting ideas of how to make the change.  The nurse must determine if the behavior is worth the lifestyle change to the patient.  The nurse should make sure the changes fit into the person’s budget and time constraints.  The nurse must gauge if the person understands the seriousness of the disease and if the benefits of treatment will outweigh the changes the patient must go through.  The nurse can determine these factors together with the patient to come up with a plan that is beneficial to the patient without being too overwhelming so the patient will stick to it.

 

i want you to comment from this post, no more than 150 words and a reference needed.