Health Promotion and Reflective Practice
Health promotion model can be defined as the process by which individuals of the nation are enables to increase their control over their healthcare activities and lifestyle management so that they can lead better quality lives. The main purpose of the healthcare promotion is to positively influence the health behaviour of the individuals as well as the communities and at the same time guide them about the living and working conditions that would influence their health (Eldredge et al. 2016). Reflective practice is one of the best ways of studying own experiences of the individuals in the healthcare so that they can improve the ways by which they work. It is indeed seen to be very helpful as well as useful for the healthcare professionals who want to carry on their learning throughout their lives to develop their skills and knowledge. Moreover, healthcare professionals need to undertake the act of reflection as this is the great way for increasing the confidence and thereby become more proactive as well as qualified professional (Thomas and Morris 2016). Therefore, in this assignment, I will also reflect upon the healthcare campaign that I have been a part of in my university campus. I had gone through a number of experiences while developing, planning and implementing the health promotion program so that I can reflect upon both the positive and negative parts and in turn emerge out as better skilled and knowledgeable in the future. This would help me in developing better-structured healthcare promotional programs in the future based on appropriate model and theories.
With the guidance of my mentor as well as with the help of my classmates, we were able to develop a health promotion campaign based on the health issue caused by sexually transmitted disease. The campaign was held on two important dates. One was on 1st February 2018 and the other was on 28th Februry 2018. We all worked in the form of team where different members were given different responsibilities to complete the work so that cumulative output can be achieved and the healthcare campaigns become successful. From the response we received on both the days of the campaigns were overwhelming. We really felt that our campaigns in deed helped in contributing in development of good health in the society. At first, we were apprehensive about the health issue on which we would present the health promotion campaigns. This was mainly because we wanted to choose one healthcare issue that is quite common in the university students and would help them to be careful about their health and lead better quality lives. We were mainly aiming for developing the campaign within the university as our budget was low and we really had short time to collect the funds.
The Campaign
After lot of brainstorming, we came up with the healthcare issue of sexually transmitted with the disorder. Each and every of the member of the team tried their best and came up with different suggestions. We finalised with the topic of sexually transmitted disorder. This topic has very little number of health promotion campaigns and students of the university are less likely to discuss such issues in open as other chronic or acute healthcare conditions are discussed. The professor was indeed quite surprised about the uniqueness of the topic that we have selected and permitted us to proceed with the topic. In the preliminary days of the planning stage of the health promotion program, we went through many rough patches and the days were not smooth for us. Although, we were trying our best to come together and plan for the program, we were failing on a number of aspects. We were not able to fix up the roles and responsibilities of the members in the health promotion campaign mainly because many of the embers were not completing with the duties assigned with them. Moreover, none of the members was clear about the exact riles and responsibilities as lot of the members were inputting their own suggestions. There was hardly anyone, who would take the suggestion of others. Although, it did not turn out to be conflict in the preliminary stages but people were demotivated as they would not understand what objectives to follow and what they need to do in order to develop the plan successfully. When some of the members were actively participating, some were just withdrawn from the project and were only present physically without any contribution of the discussion. This made others unhappy.
As the different people had different views, different personalities and different modes of thinking, decisions were not coming easily and I grew quite concerned. Several arguments, non-cooperation as well as lateness resulted from the discussion session. However, one fine morning, I made them understand that teamwork is extremely necessary in such situation as procrastination in this form would only result in failure of the project, poor quality marks and destruction of the reputation to the mentor. I requested them to overcome their internal concerns of ego, complexes and difficult feeling and work as team. This had positive impacts on the fellow classmates and theory decided to take part as collective leaders once that become motivated again, we set up goals based on the decisions of everyone following which different initiatives were taken. At first gaols were prepared with the help of SMART approach. We followed up on the correspondences and mailed the stakeholders. For effective communication, we decided to use the social media platform as that is the best way for rapid communication with a large number of members at the same time. One of the members suggested that in order to attract more individuals and to provide it an interesting outlook, they can arrange or banners, t-shirts, tablecloth and others. Gradually, we also contacted some NGOs who got ready to provide us with freebies that would attract participants. At the time of teamwork, we helped and supported each other as there was and weather bur=t we were highly determined. There were three members in the stand and other members were talking to people and influencing them to participate in the discussion session of the program. We altered and exchanged our position at the stand so that all members of the team equally share pressures. The collaborative effects of all the members of the team helped in preparing the leaflets, posters, pamphlets that were distributed and these were highly liked by the individuals who came to the campaign. Therefore, the entire project was a huge success as we had successfully managed more number of students in the health promotion campaign than we had expected. Our mentor was extremely happy about the project and was impressed about the ways by which we conducted it.
The Teamwork
In this stage I would mainly be describing the feeling that I was feeling during the entire time I was working on the project. When the professor gave the assignment to us, I was quite excited about the entire concept. I was happy to know that I got an opportunity to develop a health promotion at this early stage of my career. I was excited that I would be able to learn many new things and would be able to experience the feelings required to implement and entire health promotion program attracting participants in reality. However, from the very beginning i was apprehensive that whether I would be able to conduct such a big responsibility of health promotion programs successfully. I was quite nervous about the different steps like fund allocation, contacting stakeholders and many others. They are works of diverse fields and I could not understand whether I was capable of doing them or not. However, the feeling of working with a team of members who are of my own classmates energised me and made me excited to look forward. The thought of working in a team made me feel confident as I felt that my members would be guiding me in the activities that I am not good at. I also decided to be humble in my approach in cases, so that others can approach me without any discomfort. Moreover, during the conductance of the project, I was quiet relaxed, as I was both physically as well as mentally prepared about the ways by which we would be completing each of the initiatives of the project we have decided. I was also relaxed of the fact because my team members were supportive and there was no ego clashes and complex issues amongst us. We were transparent in approach among the team members and this made me feel confident. Moreover, we were correctly attracting the individuals and they were giving good feedback about the campaigns. This made me feel proud as well as happy that with effort and zeal to win every situation, we were able to overcome the challenges of bad weather and emerged out victorious with positive results.
In this step, we need to discuss the various bad and good parts about the assignment. The bad part of the entire project was that we had no previous experiences and therefore we were not being able to plan the project effectively. We were not able to develop the objectives and understand the different requirements that the health promotion projects require. We had gone through several models of health promotion like the Health Belief model, Relapse prevention model, transtheoretical model, ecological models and many others. However, while developing the health promotion campaign, we were not able to apply the theory effectively to the promotion program. The application of theory into practice was becoming very difficult to us and we grew fearful of the result.However, we were able to effectively carry out the program but we understood that we have not followed any models properly. Another bad thing about the project implementation was that we had no idea about how to collect funds from different sources. Allocation of resources were becoming very difficult for us as we did not have enough funds and would not provide enough time for resource allocation (Coyle et al. 2016). This is mainly because a large amount of time was spent on the planning part of the project that left with very little time for resource location. We had to complete the health promotion program with very small budget and therefore requested several organisations to support us free with their freebies. We were lucky that they accepted out proposals without which we would not have been able to attract individuals to our campaigns successfully. However, one good part of the entire project was that it taught us the importance of teamwork. Previously, there was not any assignment where we had to apply teamwork. Therefore, in the initial stages we could not understand how to initiate the programs as all were concerned about their own suggestions and got demotivated when their suggestions were not accepted (Ahn 2015). We did not have any leaders and constant non-cooperation from the team members made me tensed. Therefore, I took upon myself, the responsibility of changing the environment of the team and tried my best to motivate the team to align with the goal of the assignment. The good part was that although I did not actively become a leader but I helped my team to understand and thereby develop the teamwork values and attributes that help in success of the health promotion campaign (Symonds et al. 2015). Another good part was that it taught me the ways about how to control emotions and undertake self-regulation activity and thereby be stable in any strenuous situation. I learnt that in order to actively participate in any teamwork, I need to provide respect of everyone’s suggestion and should not always impose my feelings and suggestions on others. Being self aware and having self regulation as one of my trait is extremely important for being a perfect team member.
Personal Reflection
The health promotion project helped me in understanding the importance of the concept of social analysis. Social analysis can be defined as the approach of systematically examining an issue m, problem as well as trend that mainly accompanies an aim of prompting changes in the situation being analysed (Veale et al. 2015). Out team had conducted study prior to the establishment of the health promotion program. With the help of our mentor, we had been successfully able to conduct a survey and thereby take up the responses of about 250 students. Results from the survey had helped us to become sure that the topic of heath promotion that we have decided really requires campaigning or not. This survey indeed helped us to understand the urgency of the health promotion campaign on the topic of sexually transmitted disorders (Mustanski et al. 2015). About 60% of the participants stated that they did not know where to access for services of the disorder, 30% of them know where they could get service sand 10% did not know that whether there was any such services helping them with sexually transmitted disorder or education about them. From this situation, it helped me to understand that conducting researches about the needs and equipments of the target audience is important in order to understand that the project would be successful or not (Lypton et al. 2014). Therefore, from the analysis of the entire experience of the project, I learnt about the importance of knowing the healthcare needs and requirements of individuals and then conducting the project accordingly. I understood that most important issue is that the students are unaware of the services that they could access for in order to develop knowledge or access them in times of needs (Baum et al. 2014). Therefore, we tried to educate them about the ways they can prevent themselves from being exposed to any such disorders through the distribution of leaflets, pamphlets as well as posters. The use of easy languages and more pictures and images had helped them to find the resources interesting to gather knowledge. They praised the procedures and stated that it was much easier for them to understand causes, risk factors and ways of prevention as they were without any technical jargons (McCance et al. 2015). Moreover, the freebies were found to be attractive to the university students and such selection of freebies not only helped the students to be aware of the organisations working on the topic but also helps them to understand that they can get access to help of such organisations when they are in distress. Effective teamwork values were also developed by the team members while working together that not only helped them to understand the importance of trust and relationship development among the members but also helped them to understand the importance to overcoming self-importance, ego and complexity and emerge out victorious in the future prospects.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Project
Conclusion:
If such situation arises again, I would request my team to equally divide the period of each of the aspects of the health promotion program equally for planning, brainstorming, and allocation of funds, research, implementation, evaluation and others. This would avoid any chances of occurrence of barriers. Moreover, I would first assure that the team members are comfortable or not with each other (Naidoo et al. 2016). These would help in reduction of confusion, teamwork, effective communication and many others. Moreover, I admire the ways by which we have been able to overcome the challenge of bad weather and helped each other to share the work burden so that everyone participates equally and enjoys the responsibility on them without feeling drained of energy and stressed out.
From the entire analysis above, I developed an idea that I do not have proper skills to plan out health promotionmodels by following aspects of theories that i have studies in class. Therefore, I would try my best to practice myself so that I develop better knowledge and skills by which I can develop health promotion programs which are more planned, well funded and properly researches so that the promotional; programs does not get disrupted in any way. I would also try to develop leadership skills by which I can guide a team where the members would share high-level compatibility and bond with each other’s (Abara et al. 2015). Moreover, I would try to develop my resource allocation skill with effective verbal and written communication to receive funds for health promotion so that such issues do not appear on the further.
References:
Abara, W., Coleman, J.D., Fairchild, A., Gaddist, B. and White, J., 2015. A faith-based community partnership to address HIV/AIDS in the Southern United States: Implementation, challenges, and lessons learned. Journal of religion and health, 54(1), pp.122-133.
Ahn, S.J., 2015. Incorporating immersive virtual environments in health promotion campaigns: A construal level theory approach. Health communication, 30(6), pp.545-556.
Baum, F. and Fisher, M., 2014. Why behavioural health promotion endures despite its failure to reduce health inequities. Sociology of health & illness, 36(2), pp.213-225.
Coyle, K., Basen-Engquist, K., Kirby, D., Parcel, G., Banspach, S., Collins, J., Baumler, E., Carvajal, S. and Harrist, R., 2016. Safer choices: reducing teen pregnancy, HIV, and STDs. Public health reports.
Eldredge, L.K.B., Markham, C.M., Ruiter, R.A., Kok, G. and Parcel, G.S., 2016. Planning health promotion programs: an intervention mapping approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Lupton, D., 2014. Health promotion in the digital era: a critical commentary. Health promotion international, 30(1), pp.174-183.
McCance, K.L. and Huether, S.E., 2015. Pathophysiology-E-Book: The Biologic Basis for Disease in Adults and Children. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Mustanski, B., Greene, G.J., Ryan, D. and Whitton, S.W., 2015. Feasibility, acceptability, and initial efficacy of an online sexual health promotion program for LGBT youth: the Queer Sex Ed intervention. The Journal of Sex Research, 52(2), pp.220-230.
Naidoo, J. and Wills, J., 2016. Foundations for Health Promotion-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Symonds, K., Tiseo, L. and Coleman, B.L., 2015. Review of the Literature of Risk Factors for Breast Cancer in Adolescent and Young Adult Women (15-39 years of age) & Health Promotion Campaigns.
Thomas, P. and Morris, D., 2016. Integrating primary mental health care and mental health promotion.
Veale, H.J., Sacks-Davis, R., Weaver, E.R., Pedrana, A.E., Stoové, M.A. and Hellard, M.E., 2015. The use of social networking platforms for sexual health promotion: identifying key strategies for successful user engagement. BMC Public Health, 15(1), p.85.
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