The health promotion work of the district nurse: interpreting its embeddedness

This article presents an interpretation of health promotion within the work of a district nurse (DN).

Literature supports the centrality of health promotion within nursing. It also presents debate about its meaning and suggests uncertainties for educators and practitioners about its relationship to nursing care. Two studies in Scotland on community nurses' health promotion work with older people suggested that health promotion was evident and recognisable in planned initiatives or projects but could be hidden and unrecognised in day-to-day nursing work with individual patients and their families.

An experienced DN's interpretation of health promotion embedded in her work with a patient with multiple sclerosis is presented. The case was one of a number derived from a study designed in the constructivist paradigm, which addressed health promotion in relation to community nurse education and practice for a range of community nursing roles, including district nursing. The case study data were derived from observation of practice, interviews with the DN and the patient and from field notes.

Health promotion emerged as embedded within day-to-day holistic nursing care. The DN illustrated an understanding of the dimensions of health and of the significance of core health promotion concepts such as education, prevention, advocacy, empowerment, self-esteem and self-efficacy. However, health promotion could be invisible, described as weaved into everything and on the back of other things, and therefore not normally acknowledged and clearly articulated. Embeddedness highlighted the challenge for evaluation, when nursing and health promotion activities are intrinsically related and can be argued as sharing certain principles, processes and outcomes.

Embeddedness is a significant issue for learning in practice. The ability of experienced community nurses to interpret and articulate the concept of health promotion clearly and to make tacit knowledge evident would be of benefit to students.