Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Notes

Health Promotion vs. Disease Prevention

  • Health Promotion: Behavior motivated by the desire to enhance well-being.
  • Disease Prevention: Behavior motivated by the desire to actively avoid illness.

Levels of Disease Prevention

Primary Prevention

  • Aim: Prevent problems/diseases from occurring.
  • Focus: Health promotion and protection against specific health problems.
  • Examples: Immunization, health education, risk assessment, family planning.
  • Benefits:
    • Empowering communities to take charge of their own health.
    • Reducing the risk of disease.
    • Reducing the burden on healthcare systems.

Secondary Prevention

  • Aim: Early detection and treatment of disease to prevent it from worsening.
  • Focus: Health screening and prompt intervention.
  • Examples: Hypertension screening, breast self-examination.
  • Benefits:
    • Minimizes serious consequences by detecting and treating disease early.
    • Reduces the impact of disease by treating it early so people can regain their health.

Tertiary Prevention

  • Aim: Reduce the harm of a disease/condition after it has developed.
  • Focus: Rehabilitation and restoration.
  • Examples: Referring patients to rehabilitation centers/community hospital.
  • Benefits:
    • Improved quality of life.
    • Reduced disability.
    • Regaining lost functions and skills after an injury.
    • Delayed complications and avoided future complications from chronic conditions.

Activities of Daily Living (ADLs)

  • Definition: Basic self-care tasks.
  • Examples:
    • Feeding
    • Toileting
    • Personal Hygiene
    • Dressing
    • Mobility
    • Transferring
  • ADLs are associated with needs; satisfying lower-level needs before proceeding to higher-level needs.
  • Examples of Assistance Required
    • Patient with a cast requires temporary assistance with ADLs
    • Patient in a comatose state requires permanent assistance with ADLs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

  • Psychological motivational theory comprising a five-tier model of human needs.
  • Emphasizes:
    • Identification of individual needs
    • Prioritizing the needs
    • Encouraging individual discovery of self-actualization.
  • Lower needs must be met before higher ones, but movement between levels is flexible.

The Five Tiers:

  1. Physiological Needs:
    • Basic survival needs.
    • Examples: food, water, air, sleep, shelter.
  2. Safety Needs:
    • Security and stability.
    • Examples: health, job, financial stability, protection.
  3. Love & Belonging:
    • Social connections.
    • Examples: friendship, family, relationships.
  4. Esteem Needs:
    • Self-worth and respect.
    • Examples: confidence, achievement, recognition.
  5. Self-Actualization:
    • Personal growth and fulfillment.
    • Examples: creativity, potential.

Implications to Nursing

  • Assists nurses to respond therapeutically to the patient’s behaviors.
  • Serves as a framework for:
    • Assessing behaviors
    • Assigning priorities to desired outcomes
    • Planning nursing interventions