Exploring the health education role of nurses in the acute care settings

Abstract

This study explored the health education role of nurses working in the local acute care setting. An exploratory design, incorporating a qualitative approach was adopted. Target population were all nurses who work in one of the five surgical wards that were identified from the general acute hospital. The surgical setting was chosen as health education in these wards is deemed to be very important for patients to recover quickly from surgery. Stratified random sample was utilized to identify the actual sample that consisted of fifteen nurses. The study entailed the use of semi-structured interviews that were tape-recorded. Findings indicate that the nurses' understanding of health education is very limited. However they have a better idea of what happens in health promotion. Yet the majority of the participants still cannot clearly see the difference between the two. Most nurses see a role for themselves as health educators. Participants also expressed that a good educational background is mostly necessary for such a role and all respondents agree that it is beneficial for the patients to be educated on their health. Major subjects that participants declared to teach the patient about were issues like pre and post-operative care, specific conditions and healthy lifestyles. Many suggestions were proposed by participants for improving the health education in hospital. The researcher's inexperience in conducting a research project and the small sample size are amongst the limitations which this research study suffers. The fact that the study made use of qualitative data collection is considered a strength, which helped in exploring this field of study. Towards the end of this project some proposed recommendations for future research, practice and education will be illustrated.