Paper
Friday, 21 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Health Promotion Studies and Projects
Promoting Health Promotion: An Action Research Approach
Dympna Casey, PhD, RGN, BA, MA, Centre for Nursing & Midwifery Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland
Learning Objective #1: the learner will be able to evaluate the extent to which action research would be a useful tool for them to stimulate change in practice
Learning Objective #2: the learner will have a framework for implementing a health promoting skills training programme for nurses
This research study was divided into two phases.  Phase one determined the reality of health promoting nursing practice in an acute setting, and the factors that facilitated, or hindered, generalist nurses health promotion role.  Phase two evolved from phase one and the aim was to develop a health promotion-training programme to assist the nurses in their health promotion role; examine the extent to which they perceived they could incorporate the training and skills into daily practice and thereby instigate a change in practice. Ethical approval from the hospital ethics committee was obtained. This presentation focuses on phase two of the study.
Methods
An Action Research (AR) approach was used and the eight nurses from phase one, attended a health promotion skills training workshop.  Following the workshop the nurses ‘tried out’ the skills to see if they could incorporate them into their daily practice.  This approach was in keeping with that of action research as it involved a small-scale intervention conducted in a real world setting (Cohen and Manion, 1994) to evaluate the effect of particular actions to engender change.  A semi-structured one-to-one interview with each nurse was undertaken two months after the workshop.   During the two-month interval the nurses were asked to keep a record of their use of the skills with at least two patients.   The nurse interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.  The qualitative data analysis techniques used, were based on the work of Miles and Huberman (1994).
Findings The analysis of the data revealed three main themes: ‘using the skills’, ‘barriers to health promotion’ and ‘facilitators for health promotion’.  The findings indicated that overall participants were able to incorporate the skills into their practice; were more aware of health promotion and were more confident and enthusiastic in their work.  Suggesting that a change in practice had occurred. 

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See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)