Role of Primary Health Care Nurse in Health Promotion: Ottawa Charter Framework

This essay explores the role of a community care nurse, a key primary health care nurse, and relates their scope of practice with the areas of health promotion of the Ottawa charter. It also discusses the actions a primary health care nurse can take to improve the health of the community successfully.

Running head: PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
Primary health care nurse
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
The first point of contact with construct of the health care industry that the patients can
avail is the primary health care. It has to be mentioned that for the patients the most of the health
issues that they encounter can be addressed effectively with the help of the primary health care
(Ziebarth, 2014). Hence, the role of the primary health care nurses are extreme on the promoting
health of a community and enhancing the health status of the community. One key framework
for health promotional that the primary health care nurses use is the Ottawa Charter for health
promotion which allows the nurse to advocate the health needs of their community, enable and
then mediate the health strategies for the target clientele (Wilkes, Cioffi, Cummings, Warne &
Harrison, 2014). The essay will attempt to explore the role of a community care nurse, a key
primary health care nurse, and relate their scope of practice with the areas of health promotion of
the Ottawa charter.
The community care nurse is by far the most useful and demanded health care job role
and it encounters the most diverse patient clientele. Hence, the community care nurses requires
to develop a series of different key skills and competencies to be able to address each of the
health care needs of the clientele (Cashin et al., 2015). The community care nurse practice in the
public health settings such as county or state department health care facilities, schools, and other
such institutions. Their expertise mainly in the sectors of promoting health and wellness of the
patients. They have to provide disease prevention care, community education, and lead along
with advocate health needs of the patients, and most importantly provide assistive and supportive
care. In order to be able to provide these services, the key attributes of the community care nurse
encompasses empathy, compassion, sympathy, resilience, perseverance, patience and most of all
humanity (Islam et al., 2015).

2
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
Researchers are of the opinion that the clientele of the community care nurse is diverse,
as they are required to work for people and their families to prevent diseases, maintain optimal
health status and provide treatment interventions to all of the existing health problems that the
patients might be suffering from. The clientele of the community care nurse therefore is
extremely diverse and is associated with varied age groups. Considering the socio-demographic
details of the clientele of the community care centres, the population across different socio-
economic and cultural backgrounds are required to visit the community care nurse. Along with
that, patients from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds also seek out primary health care
services from the community care nurse (Randall, Crawford, Currie, River & Betihavas, 2017).
Among the various different health issues that a community care nurse encounters, the
most important and frequently observed is obesity. Obesity is one of the most primary public
health priority and in the Australian demographics, the incidence and prevalence of the obesity in
the patient population is alarming. Most of the health issues in the patients, such as cardiac
complications, diabetes, renal disorders and many more are stemmed from the lack of weight
management and burden of obesity and hence, this is the most abundantly faced health issue for
a community care nurse is obesity (Duckett & Willcox, 2015).
Ottawa charter has five different community actions for a health care professional to be
taking in porter to be able to promote health and help them maintain an optimal state of health.
The first policy area that is going to be discussed here is the “developing personal skills” which
allows the community nurse to be able to promote social and personal developme4nt by
providing health education, sharing adequate information and enhancing the life skills (Who.int,
2018). With respect to the likely health issue of obesity, the lack of proper and healthy dietary
habit is one of the main contributing factors leading to the obesity. The likely action that the

3
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
nurse can take in order to be able to enhance the skill of healthy eating in the target clientele is to
provide monthly free seminar sessions involving the at risk population to educate them how to
undertake healthy eating with the collaboration of dieticians and the nutritional experts. This
community action is relevant and justified as it will enhance the knowledge of at risk groups and
the session being free of cost will be easier for all socioeconomic groups to attend (Tucker &
Lanningham-Foster, 2015). The nurse however will also have to ensure that the educative
seminar is culturally appropriate and is given in simple and easy to understand English with
complementary brochures for future assistance.
The second policy is “build a healthy public policy”, which encompasses the need for the
community care nurse to take complementary approaches for the nurse to bring forth legislation,
fiscal measures, taxation and organizational change (Who.int, 2018). In this case, it has to be
mentioned that the community care nurse to uptake a petition strategy to enforce a public policy
that mandates frequent and inclusive screening for obesity among the lower socioeconomic
sector of the community. In justification, it has to be menti0oned in most cases, the lower
socioeconomic belt of the community has the most minimal understanding and literacy of
obesity and how to prevent it. As mentioned by Christie et al. (2017), the lack of literacy and
help seeking behaviour among these populations lead to misdiagnosis or lack of diagnosis of
obesity and exacerbates into diabetes or cardiac complications which could have been easily
prevented if the obesity could have been diagnosed previously. Hence, a community care nurse
holds the position through which the need for a mandatory and free of cost obesity screening as a
public health policy directed at particularly the lower socio-economic sectors can be a relevant
and needed action taken to build a healthy public policy.

4
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
The next are for health promotion as directed by the Ottawa charter is the “Create
supportive environment” which allows the nurse to explore and improve the inextricable link
between people and their environments in order to take up a socio-ecologically appropriate
approach to health (Who.int, 2018). In this case, the relatable action that the community nurse
could be taking is associated with family centred diet modification for the children and
adolescents at risk of obesity. Here, the parents and family member should be trained to
incorporate similar lifestyle changes and diet modifications as their child so that they do not feel
forced or restricted in their own house and can find a supportive environment in their own house
to fight obesity. As per the Flattum et al. (2015), the impact of the family following similar
lifestyle restriction creates a supportive environment for the children to follow and helps them
fight the disorder or disease more successfully. Hence, it can be mentioned that this action will
be exceptionally successful in preventing childhood obesity if carried out effectively.
The next policy area is the “strengthening community action” which is the most impactful
intervention that can bring forth a community wide change in the health status of the target
population (Who.int, 2018). In this case, the community nurse can arrange for a community
workshop to engage the community members, especially the middle aged and aged members
suffering from obesity or are at risk of obesity to instil the habit of daily exercise by the means of
a community engagement exercise. Researchers are of the opinion that the concept of community
development draws upon the idea of building a social support network to improve health
promotional habits and in turn improve help (Berge et al., 2016). The concept of unanimous
public participation in this community workshop from different cultural and social backgrounds
will help the target population develop a positive perception regarding obesity and how to
manage it. Hence, this peer support network based activity will be extremely helpful in changing

5
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
the vision of a community towards obesity as a health issue which needs to be prevented (Huse
et al., 2018).
The last policy area that is needed to be discussed in this essay is the “reorientation of
health services” which will help in distributing the responsibility of health promotional and
services among individuals, community groups, health professionals, health service institutions
and governments (Pandey, 2018). This is a priority area that is essentially focused on shared
decision making and empowering the community to take control of their health issues with
collaboration of other stakeholders. In case of addressing obesity among the community, the
likely action that the nurse could be taking can be the arranging a convention or assembly twice a
year involving health policy makers, health service institutions, representatives of different
health care professionals and community members, where the nurse will advocate the need for
service improvement and enhancement as expressed by the communities providing the people
with the opportunity to control their own health service design (Mangroo, Viswanathan, Marie &
Bovet, 2017). It will be an extremely helpful intervention action which will help in creating an
empowered community expressing their needs and grievances to reorient the health services
designed for them to improve their health status.
In conclusion, it has to be mentioned that a community care nurse is undoubtedly the best
and most relevant representation of the primary health care nurse. A community nurse to provide
a wide range of services to the clientele, although there are certain health issues associated with
public health priorities which requires a more systematic and extensive planning for a
community nurse. This essay explored the areas of the Ottawa health charter which can serve as
a brilliant framework for a primary health care nurse to design and develop actions to improve
the health of the community successfully. It can be hoped that the actions listed in the essay, if

6
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
carried out effectively, can be of extreme help to a community to fight and control obesity, a
frightening health issue of this century.

7
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
References:
Berge, J. M., Jin, S. W., Hanson, C., Doty, J., Jagaraj, K., Braaten, K., & Doherty, W. J. (2016).
Play it forward! A community-based participatory research approach to childhood obesity
prevention. Families, Systems, & Health, 34(1), 15. Doi: 10.1037/fsh0000116
Cashin, A., Stasa, H., Gullick, J., Conway, R., Cunich, M., & Buckley, T. (2015). Clarifying
clinical nurse consultant work in Australia: a phenomenological study. Collegian, 22(4),
405-412. Doi: 10.1016/j.colegn.2014.09.002
Christie, D., Hudson, L. D., Kinra, S., Wong, I. C. K., Nazareth, I., Cole, T. J., ... & Morris, S.
(2017). A community-based motivational personalised lifestyle intervention to reduce
BMI in obese adolescents: results from the Healthy Eating and Lifestyle Programme
(HELP) randomised controlled trial. Archives of disease in childhood, archdischild-2016.
Doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2016-311586
Duckett, S., & Willcox, S. (2015). The Australian health care system (No. Ed. 5). Oxford
University Press. Retrieved from
https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20173279780
Flattum, C., Draxten, M., Horning, M., Fulkerson, J. A., Neumark-Sztainer, D., Garwick, A., ...
& Story, M. (2015). HOME Plus: Program design and implementation of a family-
focused, community-based intervention to promote the frequency and healthfulness of
family meals, reduce children’s sedentary behavior, and prevent obesity. International
Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 12(1), 53. Doi: 10.1186/s12966-
015-0211-7

8
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
Huse, O., Hettiarachchi, J., Gearon, E., Nichols, M., Allender, S., & Peeters, A. (2018). Obesity
in Australia. Obesity research & clinical practice, 12(1), 29-39. Doi:
10.1016/j.orcp.2017.10.002
Islam, N., Shapiro, E., Wyatt, L., Riley, L., Zanowiak, J., Ursua, R., & Trinh-Shevrin, C. (2017).
Evaluating community health workers' attributes, roles, and pathways of action in
immigrant communities. Preventive medicine, 103, 1-7. Doi:
10.1016/j.ypmed.2017.07.020
Laws, R., Campbell, K. J., Pligt, P., Ball, K., Lynch, J., Russell, G., ... & Denney-Wilson, E.
(2015). Obesity prevention in early life: an opportunity to better support the role of
maternal and child health nurses in Australia. BMC nursing, 14(1), 26. Doi:
10.1186/s12912-015-0077-7
Mangroo, G., Viswanathan, B., Marie, G., & Bovet, P. (2017). Overweight, obesity and walking
time among children and adolescents: findings from the School Screening Program in
2016 and comparison with findings since 1998. Public Health Authority, Ministry of
Health, Seychelles. Retrieved from
https://serval.unil.ch/resource/serval:BIB_8B6A9A5A73D5.P001/REF.pdf
Pandey, A. (2018). Non-adherence to Lifestyle (Diet and Exercise) Modification
Recommendations among the Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in a Tertiary Level
Hospital. Journal of Institute of Medicine. Retrieved from
file:///C:/Users/LAPTOP_PS0020/Downloads/1002-1086-1-PB.pdf
Randall, S., Crawford, T., Currie, J., River, J., & Betihavas, V. (2017). Impact of community
based nurse-led clinics on patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, patient access and cost

9
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSE
effectiveness: A systematic review. International journal of nursing studies, 73, 24-33.
Doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2017.05.008
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. (2018). Retrieved from
http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/ottawa/en/index1.html
Tucker, S., & Lanningham-Foster, L. M. (2015). Nurse-led school-based child obesity
prevention. The Journal of School Nursing, 31(6), 450-466. Doi:
10.1177/1059840515574002
Wilkes, L., Cioffi, J., Cummings, J., Warne, B., & Harrison, K. (2014). Clients with chronic
conditions: community nurse role in a multidisciplinary team. Journal of clinical
nursing, 23(5-6), 844-855. Doi: 10.1111/jocn.12245
Ziebarth, D. (2014). Evolutionary conceptual analysis: faith community nursing. Journal of
religion and health, 53(6), 1817-1835. Doi: 10.1007/s10943-014-9918-z