Professional Documents
Culture Documents
IEC
IEC
Beliefs
Values
Culture
Thoughts
Feelings
Knowledge
Attitudes
A person has many different thoughts, feelings, and ideas in his/her
mind about the world. Furthermore, these thoughts or feelings are shaped
by knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of a person.
Belief
• Belief is something which is accepted on the basis of faith not on
objective evidences.
• The factors that affect the belief of a person include the influence of
parents, relatives, friends, and significant others. It affects the health
status of a person as it can be beneficial, injurious, or neutral.
For example, if parents have the habit of smoking, then it can lead to a
positive belief in the mind of child that smoking is something which is
not injurious, and this may encourage the child to start smoking
Values
• Values constitute another factor that affects the health behavior of a
person.
• It refers to thoughts and feelings to which one attaches the most worth
and importance.
Culture
• The culture to which a person belongs also has an impact on the health
behavior of a person.
• Each culture has its own way of doing things and has its own system of
beliefs
• For example, in some culture there is belief that mother's first milk
(colostrums) should be discarded as it is for the God and is not beneficial
for the child.
Health Behavior Modification
Cues to Action: Cues to action are those events or happenings which may
be either bodily (physical signs and symptoms of a disease) or
environmental (public awareness camp) that motivate an individual to
take action.
Likelihood of action
• Perceived Benefits: It refers to the perceived benefit of the strategies
designed to reduce the threat of disease or illness.
• Perceived Barriers: These are the consequences that may happen due to
the particular health actions, including physical, psychological, and
financial demands.
HEALTH EDUCATION
• The first step in the planning of health education is to decide the key
health problems of the individual or group and the advices that should be
given.
• Any proposal for a change of health behavior should be simple to put
into practice with the existing knowledge and skills.
• It should not conflict with local cultural beliefs, and more importantly, it
should meet a felt need of the individual or community.
• A good health education programme should modify the routine advices
to fit in with people's circumstances. For example, education about
nutrition should be based on foods that are available locally, aids for the
disabled made from local materials, and latrines built with traditional
methods.
• If the planned change in health behavior is hard to promote, it may be
wise to start with a simple change that does fit in and meets an
immediate need of the individual or community.
• Once immediate need has been met and the individual perceives clear-
cut benefits, it may help in achieving a more difficult objective
Planning for Venues of Health Education
There are certain principles that should be kept in mind by every staff nurse
or public health nurse while delivering health education to the individual
patient or the community.
• Credibility
• Interest
• Participation
• Motivation
• Comprehension
• Reinforcement
• Learning by doing
• Known to unknown
• Simple Language
• Setting an example
• Human relations
• Feedback
1.Credibility
• It is the degree to which the message to be communicated is perceived as
trustworthy by the receiver
• Good health education must be consistent and compatible with scientific
knowledge and also with the local culture, educational system and social
goals
2. Interest
• Health teaching should be related to the interests of the people
• Health programme should be based on the “FELT NEEDS”, so that it
becomes “people’s programme
Felt needs are the real health needs of the people, that is needs the people
feel about themselves
3.Motivation
• In every person, there is a fundamental desire to learn. Awakening this
desire is called motivation
• Two types of motives
– primary motives-are driving forces initiating people into action
– secondary motives –are created by outside forces or incentives
• Main aim of motivation is to change behavior
• Motivation is contagious: one motivated person may spread motivation
throughout a group
• The important thing that should be communicated is “what to do” and
not “what not to do.” “Fear of disease” as a motive should not be used
regularly or perpetually in delivering health education.
The people are not interested in health slogans such as “take care of your
health.” Therefore, it must focus on the need of the community (felt
need) so that they will be interested to listen and learn the health
information.
4. Principle of Participation
This principle is based on the psychological principle of active learning.
Health education must ensure the active participation of the community
people that will lead to better learning.
5. Principle of Comprehension
• The public health nurse must know the level of understanding of the
group member for which the teaching is directed.
• One barrier to communication is the use of jargons or technical words
which are difficult to be comprehended by the lay person.
6. Principle of Reinforcement
• Repetition and reinforcement of the health information at intervals is
extremely useful to make the learning long lasting.
If the message is repeated in different ways, people are more likely to
remember it.
7. Principle of Learning by Doing
• Learning is an active process.
• The Chinese proverb “If I hear, I forget, if I see, I remember, if I do, I
know” illustrates the importance of “doing” for effective and active
learning.
8. Principle of Known to Unknown
It is a very well-known maxim of teaching which emphasizes that the nurse
should proceed from known to the unknown content of the health topic
while delivering health education to a group.