Student experiences of nursing health promotion practice in hospital settings

It has become evident that the current approaches to health care are inadequate for the changing needs of the world. Health promotion has gained recognition as a preferred option and many nursing programmes throughout the world have reoriented their curricula to incorporate this approach. This paper describes a study that was conducted to explicate student experiences of the practice of health promotion. Twenty-four students participated in the study; qualitative methods, narrative accounts and reflective journals were used to collect the data and the data was analysed using van Manen's recommendations for thematic analysis. Three major themes emerged: the centrality of caring; empowerment--power, participation and partnerships; and the primacy of people. Student narratives are used to illustrate the themes.