The educational preparation of student nurses as communicators of health and wellbeing.

Abstract

of the theories of health and sickness suggests that the most important job of a nurse is to ensure that the patient is placed in the correct milieu to ensure optimal health. The ability to actualize this requires the development of a sound knowledge base, skills in observation and communication to assess, inform and educate patients and their families. Many nurses have the skills that enable them to incorporate health promotion principles into their existing work, and without doubt this is the suggestion within current government and nursing policy. Yet a plethora of studies suggest a dichotomy between health promotion theory and nursing practice and that communicating health messages is not necessarily something that is actualized in nursing practice. Given the arguments suggested above – which current research within our own BSc Nursing programme would concur with – we have begun to consider how better to prepare our undergraduate nurses as future promoters of health and wellbeing. The undergraduate pre-registration nursing curriculum is a significant instrument for developing and assessing nursing skills to enable effective communication of health messages. In particular, modules of study that focus on the promotion of health and wellbeing offer an opportunity for student nurses to consider theoretical frameworks and practise such skills. Current research within our own BSc Nursing programme is considering how areas of the curriculum can encourage the student nurse to analyze the gap between theory and practice in communicating health messages to patients and others with two areas offered as a brief discussion in this paper.