School Based Youth Health Nurses and health promotion: The Ottawa what?

Abstract

Aim: The purpose of this research is to examine School Based Youth Health Nurses experience of health promotion. Background: The School Based Youth Health Nurse Program is a state-wide school nursing initiative in Queensland, Australia. The program employs more than 100 fulltime and fractional school nurses who provide health services in state high schools. The role incorporates two primary components: individual health consultations and health promotion strategies. Design/Methods: This study is a retrospective inquiry generated from a larger qualitative research project about the experience of school based youth health nursing. The original methodology was phenomenography. In-depth interviews were conducted with sixteen school nurses recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling. This study accesses a specific set of raw data about School Based Youth Health Nurses experience of health promotion. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) is used as a deductive framework for analysis. Results: The findings indicate school nurses have neither an adverse or affirmative conceptual experience of health promotion and an adverse operational experience of health promotion based on the action areas of the Ottawa Charter. Conclusions: The findings of this research are important because they challenge the notion that school nurses are the most appropriate health professionals to do school health promotion. If school nurses are the most appropriate health professionals to do school health promotion, there are implications for recruitment and training and qualifications. If school nurses are not, who are the most appropriate health professionals to do school health promotion ? Implications for Practice: These findings can be applied to other models of school nursing because they relate specifically to school nurses’ experience of health promotion.