Promover a saúde infantil e pediátrica: diagnóstico e intervenção especializada de enfermagem

Abstract

The paediatric nurse stands out for the ability to assist children and families on optimizing their health, for providing differentiated care for children and young people in complex and special health situations and for providing individualized care, adapted to the child’s developmental stage, to promote health. Health promotion is the intervention of the paediatric nurse that aims not only to optimize the family members’ health and to promote the adoption of health promotive behaviours, but also the harmony and family health, as a dynamic and changeable state of well-being that includes biological, psychological, social, spiritual and cultural factors. The first chapter of this report focus on the theoretical framework of the Health Promotion in Nursing Practice, developed by Nola Pender, who through the “Health Promotion Model” explains which factors have influence on the process of adopting health promotion behaviours and how the nurse’s intervention shall be guided to achieve those goals. Subsequently, a reflection is carried out on the relationship between the concepts of nursing diagnosis and child development, which includes a scoping review that aims to identify the available scientific evidence on the milestones of a healthy child development on the first year of life, in hospital care and primary health nursing care. This scoping review aims to answer the review question: “What are the milestones of the healthy child development of the new-born and the infant in nursing care?” The second chapter of the report includes the reflection on the skill development throughout the different nursing care contexts. The nursing care on the NICU was challenging because it’s a very specific and complex area of intervention, however it was gratifying due to the possibility of providing nursing care to the newborn with special needs and his family and due to the development of essential specialist nurse skills. Providing nursing care on a paediatric emergency ward allowed me to develop the ability to assess the needs, make decisions and intervene in the child and family. The projects developed made it possible to optimize the nursing team intervention on health promotion though parental capacity. Providing nursing care in a communitarian health centre was also very challenging, given that my professional experience is exclusively in a hospital context, however, allowed me to developed skills in the scope of assessing the needs of the child and family, decision making, and providing anticipatory nursing care to promote the health and development of the child and the well-being of the family. Thanks to the reflective process exercised in the elaboration of this report, it was possible to understand the importance of the specialist nurse as a facilitator of nursing care delivery and agent of health and child development promotion.

Date of Award	1 Jun 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Sílvia Caldeira (Supervisor)