A social cognitive model for health education/health promotion practice

What is it about?

The last decade or so has seen a marked increase in the amount of health educational/health promotional activities that nurses are expected to undertake. This has followed on from concerted calls to make health education a familiar and recognized part of nursing practice. Despite this, past and current evidence identifies that nurses have been, and continue to be, ineffective and inconsistent health education practitioners. Where health education activity does take place it tends to centre specifically on social cognitive behavioural change strategies. Subsequently, it is argued here that any failure on the part of nurses successfully to apply health educational initiatives into practice has been compounded by the lack of any nursing‐specific social cognitive model process. This paper seeks to redress this imbalance by putting forward the case for such a model, developing it, and demonstrating how it can be incorporated into the practice setting.

Featured Image

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article critically draws upon contextual process in order to develop an evolving theoretical perspective for health education practice. The proposed model has evolved from this new perspective. Development of this model has drawn on contemporary social cognitive behavioural models – using them as a means to develop a further conceptual framework for nursing.

Perspectives