Lifestyle Changes for Health Promotion

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Nurses can encourage patients to make immediate and permanent behavior changes in a variety of ways. Specifically, the “health belief model” may serve as an avenue. According to our text, “The health belief model is a paradigm used to predict and explain health behavior. The health belief model was developed to describe why people failed to participate in programs to detect or prevent disease” (Edelman & Mandle, 2010, p. 248). Additionally, “The health belief model and social learning theory assist the nurse in formulating an action plan that meets the needs and capabilities of the individual making health behavior changes” (Edelman & Mandle, 2010, p. 248). This model states important points that serve as guidelines for nurses to help enable them to determine an individuals’’ willingness to change health behaviors and to understand the factors that contribute to their state of health (Edleman & Mandle, 2010). They are as follows: • Individual perceptions or readiness for change • The value of health to the individual compared with other aspects of living • Perceived susceptibility to a health problem, disease, or complications • Perceived seriousness of the disease level threatening the achievement of certain goals or aims • Risk factors to a disease attributed to heredity, race or culture, medical history, or other causes • Perceived benefits of health action • Perceived barriers to promotion action As nurses, we must always act on the opportunity to educate and recognize those opportunities as they arise. We must be able to evaluate the willingness of individuals to learn and to accept new ways that they can improve their health. We do have such a large amount of face-to-face contact with people that it is only in our benefit to take advantage of educational situations.

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