Health promotion in nursing education

Problem definition: Nurses have an increasingly crucial role in the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, including healthy dietary behaviour, of patients. Nevertheless, most nurses do not incorporate the promotion of healthy dietary behaviour in their current practice to the fullest potential. Nurses experience barriers in addressing dietary behaviour or in supporting and achieving actual behaviour change of patients, including a lack of knowledge and skills. Still, these topics are hardly present in current nursing curricula. Therefore, education targeted at current and future nurses is needed on the following topics relevant for the professional practice: a) nutrition and health, b) dietary behaviour change, c) professional dilemmas in nutritional care, and d) interprofessional collaboration. Aims and objectives: To contribute to preventive care, leading to vital people in the end, nurse-perceived facilitators, barriers and needs regarding the promotion of healthy dietary behaviour in current nursing practice will be identified. Subsequently, nutrition and related topics relevant for the nursing practice will be integrated in nursing education. Thus, training materials will be developed and evaluated to train (future) nurses in promoting healthy dietary behaviour of patients. Sub-objectives: i. To explore which professional factors are associated with the promotion of healthy dietary behaviour of patients by nurses, and to formulate relevant learning outcomes for education; ii. To develop learning strategies for (future) nurses to improve knowledge, attitude and skills for using health promotion and behaviour change techniques related to dietary behaviour; iii. To evaluate process and effect of the education developed in the project.