MSHT 631 Week 8 Midpoint Reflection

As part of my pursuit of a Master’s of Health Studies with a leadership focus, I am completing MHST 631 is a final elective course. Despite utilizing pieces related to health promotion in my acute care role at an individual level and briefly at unit level, this course has been an influential resource to develop an appreciation for health promotion. Health promotion encompasses understanding the social determinants of health, levels of influence broader then individual behaviours or decisions, and understanding root of socioecological causes of said behaviours or decisions. As an acute care nurse, I started my professional practice jumping to conclusions regarding a patient’s presentation and associated lack of preventative measures being taken to address health concerns; however as I advanced my career with a gerontology focus, I began to obtain an understanding of the various culprits for these decisions and being able to advocate on their behalf. An essential component of health promotion is the understanding of root causes and barriers contributing to the problem.

While exploring my health promotion problem, I have been able to step back and have a broader understanding of social determinants of health and their impact on an individual or populations health. As explored through out the course thus far, I have gained knowledge of challenges faced in health promotion on sustainability and importance of initiatives going beyond the individual level of influence. While providing individual’s with tools and supports to improve their health, it goes beyond in having resources and social determinants of health as barriers being changed to foster healthy behaviours. While the Ottawa charter provides foundation of action steps, the five calls to action have yet to be implemented in fully sustainable manners related to aging population and concerns faced, especially in terms of social isolation and loneliness.

As an acute care clinician, shifting perspective to broader socioecological factors in disease process has been challenging. It has been routine to consider individual behaviours as contributes but this is not reflective of sustainable health promotion. My assignment one performance was reflective of the narrow-minded scope of the individual without broader considerations. Moving forward, I am hopeful to become more aware of socioecological aspects and various levels of influence to sustainable health promotion and maximize my ability to apply this to a health promotion initiative. My experience in senior friendly care, is that it is siloed; however, with the knowledge I am obtaining in this course, I hope having a broader perspective of socioecological factors, this can be applied to my health promotion solution related to social isolation and loneliness in senior population.