Evaluation of the health promotion activities of paediatric nurses: is the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion a useful framework?

Researchers were involved in an evaluative approach to examine the health promotion activities of paediatric nurses from a paediatric tertiary hospital centre (N = 83) and five paediatric non-tertiary hospital centres (N = 48) from Sydney, Australia. The aims of this study were to understand the nature of heath promotion in paediatric nursing practice by examining nurses' attitudes, investigating paediatric nurses' involvement in the five action area of the Ottawa Charter, and identifying barriers to the implementation of health promotion in practice. The researchers developed a health promotion survey based around the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (World Health Organisation, 1986a), and a literature review of nurses' involvement in health promotion. Results showed that tertiary paediatric nurses undertook more varied health promotion activities such as creating supportive environments (CSE), reorienting health services (RHS) and building healthy public policy (BHPP) than did non-tertiary paediatric nurses who were involved in only one action area of the Charter, that of developing personal skills (DPS). This research revealed that within paediatric nursing practice the action areas of the Ottawa Charter of BHPP and CSE were important; and that there is support for the advocacy role of paediatric nurses. There is also evidence that paediatric nurses may have health promotion knowledge deficits associated with the Ottawa Charter, and that the environment of multidisciplinary allied health professionals in a tertiary paediatric centre may positively influence senior paediatric nurses and their capacity to be involved in varied health promotion activities associated with the Ottawa Charter.