Portuguese nurses' conceptions of their health education (HE) training and their felt needs of HE

Abstract

Primary Health Care (PHC) is seen as the sector of Health Services most appropriate to develop practices of Health Education (HE) and PHC nurses are seen as the key personal. The objectives of the present study were: (i) to identify nurses’ conceptions of health education, (ii) to characterise their health education practices, (iii) to know their HE-training, and (iv) to identify their felt needs on HE-training. For this purpose, a cross-sectional and retrospective study was carried out in the whole population of 211 nurses of the total 16 Primary Health Centres of the District of Vila Real, in the Northern Region of Portugal. The quantitative information was collected from questionnaires and it was complemented with deep and interpretative information obtained from interviews. The highest percentage (69.1%) of questionnaire respondents were included in the category “participative” concept of health education and health promotion (HEHP) whereas the interviewees, although expressing so, showed a rather normative discourse, very much centred in the transmission of information. The majority of nurses said they carry out HEHP activities – “sometimes” (33.8%), “often” (39.8%) and “always” (16.9%) – most of them related to “elderly health” (85.0%). Nurses’ continuous HE-training is not associated to their professional position, to their time of PHC activity or to their HEHP conceptions as far as “participative” or “traditional” perspectives are concerned. However, nurses’ continuous HE-training seems to promote nurses’ motivation for implementing HEHP practices more frequently and for expressing specific felt needs of more HE-training. Moreover, results demonstrate a gap between the offered HE-training and the nurses’ HE-training felt needs.