NRS 429V Using the health belief model, how can nurses encourage patients to make immediate and permanent behavior changes; particularly as they relate to lifestyle choices? Using the health belief model, how can nurses encourage patients to make immediate and permanent behavior changes; particularly as they relate to lifestyle choices?

 

Family Health Assessment is crucial in identifying the family’s strength and weakness in terms of access to quality and affordable care. The assessment also provides crucial information to the healthcare practitioners on the threats to achieving comprehensive health and general wellness for the whole population. Furthermore, the family assessment prepares nurses especially the Family Nurse Practitioners with the relevant skills required in the assessment of the family health patterns and be able to offer family-based solutions (Peterson-Burch, 2018). The concept has also proved to be instrumental in advancement of genetic interventions in some of the complex conditions.

Re: Topic 1 DQ 1
The nurse serves an important role in educating patients and families. It is important that the education caters to the learning styles of those being taught. Sonya Blevins (2020) describes four different learning style preferences: aural, read/write, kinesthetic, and visual. When care is taken to assess a learner’s style better educational outcomes/retention occurs. The nurse often reinforces education given by providers and assesses a patient’s understanding of the information provided. Nurse’s develop an educational care plan that addresses a patient’s individual needs using the nursing process of Assessment, Diagnosis, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation . As health educators, nurses apply evidence-based practice to ensure the best possible outcomes.

When it comes to educating patients and families, other considerations besides learning styles have to be made. A person’s level of education must be considered, it is suggested that education be geared towards 6th grade competency in reading and writing. In addition, making sure that the information is in the learners preferred language is important as well. An assessment of a patient’s ability to hear, see, and speak also needs to be considered (Blevins, 2020).

Acknowledging a patient’s readiness to learn is also a special consideration. Many patients have physical, emotional, and or cognitive barriers that impede learning. When this occurs, involving the support people in the educational process is helpful. In addition, assessing the understanding and retention of the information is also a consideration.

Behavior objectives in care plans or health promotion are necessary when those actions are causing harm to the patient’s well-being. Whether the patient is compliant or not, the behavioral objectives provide a framework for expectations and goals for the patient, support persons and health care team. Patients often need the assistance of professionals such as nurses to help set goals that facilitate behavior change. It has been found that characteristic of goals influence the commitment to achieve the goal. For example, an “easy” goal has been found to encourage poor effort and performance (Bailey, 2017). A nurse can help the patient navigate through the complicated processes of goal setting.