Epilepsy health promotion - An educational journey

Few undergraduate health promotion nurse education programmes move beyond hypothetical pieces of course work. This paper focuses on an epilepsy health promotion intervention undertaken by second year adult and mental health nursing students at Leeds Metropolitan University. These students studied collaboratively, facilitated by tutors to design, plan and implement an initiative focussing on epilepsy health promotion in a primary school. The educational benefits for the primary school children, the undergraduate nurses and the health promotion nursing tutors are examined. These included children demonstrating self-awareness of possible stigma and how to relate more positively to people with epilepsy. The undergraduate nurses also gained an invaluable learning experience, developed confidence and professional skill competencies in providing a feasible and original health promotion initiative. The implications for health promotion nursing tutors in supporting this type of educational intervention are discussed in relation to both the changing nature of the National Health Service and the current demands on curriculum design. The authors suggest that fully embedding health promotion theory in practice places high demands, in the short-term, on nursing tutor capacity. Clearly, this may be outweighed by the long-term benefits of preparing innovative graduate practitioners fit for practice.