Question

Compare and contrast the three different levels of health promotion (primary, secondary, tertiary). Discuss how the levels of prevention help determine educational needs for a patient.

Answer 1

Health Promotion/Prevention: It includes a wide range of activities known as interventions that are aimed at reducing risks or threats to health. There are three categories of prevention: primary, secondary and tertiary. The nurse can use each of these to determine the patient’s education needs.

Primary prevention: It aims to prevent disease or injury before it ever occurs. An example of this is vaccinations and wellness exams. This also includes health promotion and interventions such as programs aimed at increasing activity in the elderly to improve heart health.  

Secondary prevention: It is focused on early detection to reduce the impact of a disease or injury that has already occurred. This is done by detecting and treating disease or injury as soon as possible before they progress and cause irreversible damage.   Nurses can educate people on the recommended screenings such as colonoscopies at age 50 if no family history, yearly pap smears, annual flu shots etc. Importance of daily, low-dose aspirin and a heart helathy diet and exercise programs can prevent further heart attacks or strokes.

Tertiary prevention: It comes into play when a disease has already caused permanent damage. The focus of this level is to improve their quality of life and improve their ability to function. You are not preventing at this stage, but you are softening the impact of the disease or illness by helping people lives with it as best as possible. An example is educating a patient status post Coronary Artery Bypass surgery about cardiac rehabilitation.

By determining where the patient falls on this spectrum can help guide the nurse as to the patients needs. For many health problems, a combination of primary, secondary and tertiary interventions are needed to achieve a meaningful degree of prevention and protection (Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention, 2015).

References:

Green, S. (2018). Understanding Families and Health Promotion. Retrieved from Health Promotion: https://lc.gcumedia.com/nrs429vn/health-promotion-health-and-wellness-across-the-continuum/v1.1/#/chapter/4

Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention . (2015). Retrieved from Institute for Work & Helath : https://www.iwh.on.ca/what-researchers-mean-by/primary-secondary-and-tertiary-prevention

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