Effects of Community Health Nursing Process on Health Promotion Behaviors in Adult and Elderly Based on the Primary Health Care Unit in One Thai Community

Abstract

A quasi-experimental study design aimed at exploring the effects of community the health nursing process based on PCU service application for promoting healthy behavior among 29 participants who are over 35 years old. The participants have been divided into a control and an experimental group.

The experimental group participated in five CHN processes: assessment, analysis of problems, planning, implementation and evaluations, family health education strategies with home visits within the context of  PCU service.

The instrumentation employed comprised a health promotion behaviors questionnaire, observations during in-home visits and focus-group discussion records. The data was analyzed by ANCOVA and content analysis.

Following the participation process, the quantitative data was divided into six aspects of health promotion behaviors.  The data showed a statistically significant difference between the groups whereby the experimental group had higher mean scores than the control group in two aspects 1) health responsibility at  p = .025 and 2) personal relationships at p = .009 however, the exercise scores were lower than the control group at p = .039.  In addition, the health problems and health care needs have been analyzed and the policies developed within the scope of PCU service.

Conclusion: The community health nursing process should be useful for health teams to promote health behaviors in adult and the elderly groups based on primary healthcare units.

Keywords: community health nursing process; adult and elderly; health promotion behaviors; primary healthcare unit.