Health promotion practice and its implementation in Swedish health care

Health promotion practice is an important work assignment within the entire health and medical care sector. Nurses are important for the development and implementation of health promotion in clinical practice.

The aim was to describe how district nurses view health promotion practice and how it was implemented in clinical practice following a training initiative.

The study has a descriptive design and a qualitative method.

The sample consisted of three focus groups with 16 participants. The interviews were conducted as a conversation with focus on the district nurses view of health promotion and its implementation in clinical practice. The data have been processed using manifest qualitative content analysis.

Three categories, titled Training as motivation, Lack of grounding and Lack of scope were identified. The result demonstrated that training provides motivation, but also the importance of grounding in the organization and the need for scope in performing health promotion practice.

Our results show that the training initiative has contributed positively to the district nurses' view of health promotion practice, but that they also feel that there are obstacles. The district nurses in our study suggest that health promotion practice should be more visible, and not something that is done when time permits.

The district nurses feel motivated and have an enthusiasm for health promotion practice but more time and resources are required to design successful health-promoting initiatives. Before implementing a major training initiative for healthcare personnel in health promotion, it is essential to examine whether the conditions for this exist in the organization.