Health promotion ideology and nursing education

Area of Science:

• Nursing Research
• Health Promotion Ideology
• Sociology of Health

Background:

• Nursing's focus on visible health promotion overlooks influential invisible ideologies.
• Current health promotion practices are significantly shaped by underlying, often unacknowledged, beliefs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the ideology of individual responsibility in health promotion.
• To make visible the embedded individualistic orientation within nursing's health promotion approaches.
• To identify how this ideology is perpetuated in nursing education.

Main Methods:

• Critical analysis of health promotion ideology in nursing.
• Examination of nursing curricula for embedded ideologies.
• Proposal of strategies for nurse educators.

Main Results:

• The dominant ideology in health promotion is individual responsibility.
• Nursing curricula often perpetuate this individualistic ideology.
• Lack of attention to the ideological underpinnings of health promotion.

Conclusions:

• Nursing's approach to health promotion is heavily influenced by the ideology of individual responsibility.
• Nurse educators need strategies to address and critically examine these ideological underpinnings.
• Preparing nurses requires a deeper understanding of the social and ideological contexts of health promotion.