Promoting Health Through Interpersonal Relationships

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‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ In recent years the role of the health professional has vastly changed and the expression ‘prevention is better than cure’ has become central in many new public health agendas. According to Linsley et al (2011) this adjustment of how public health care is conveyed is because there is now greater importance on promotion of preventative health and increasingly people are being cared for in a primary care setting rather than hospital. As a result of this, the nurses’ role has changed so that they not only look after the sick but also promote a healthy lifestyle. According to the World Health Organisation (1946) the definition of health is as follows: ‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. The WHO definition of health is just one of many, as everyone’s perceptions of health vary, making it a difficult concept to define in unlimited terms. According to Scriven (2010), the health professional’s understanding of the concepts of health has altered over time from a mechanistic view of the body and overall health to a more dynamic model of health. In order to promote health, good communication and interpersonal skills are essential for healthcare workers. These skills must be developed in order to build relationships with patients (Kraszewski and McEwen, 2010). The purpose of this assignment is to critique the interaction between a health professional and a service user taking into consideration the winder determinants of health, models of health promotion and models of communication, including any barriers that are observed. 1A Dahlgren and Whitehead’s 1991 model can be used to outline the social determinants of health that are relevant to the main characters in the video clip. This model uses five ‘layers’ to describe the factors affecting health. These
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