Empowerment and its application in health promotion in acute care settings: nurses' perceptions

Empowerment has long been a central tenet of health promotion theory. Globally, governments have advocated the use of empowerment in their public health policies. Nurses are seen as essential in the delivery of this agenda using the empowerment model to engage patients in self-care and decision-making.

Six different vignettes requiring a health promotion intervention were shown to a convenience sample of 20 Registered Nurses in a United Kingdom acute care hospital. The nurses were asked to describe how they would meet the health promotion needs of the patients described in the vignettes. The data were collected between 2005 and 2006 and analysed using thematic analysis.

Two types of practitioner were identified: Type I divergent nurse health promotion practitioner and Type II convergent nurse health promotion practitioner. The main factor distinguishing the two types was the way in which they conceptualized the verb 'to empower'.

The theory of health promotion taught to participants does not seem to be applied in acute care settings. This raises the possibility that Registered Nurses acting as mentors and role models are convergent rather than divergent thinkers.