Abstract

Socio-cultural factors negate the health of women. Therefore, health promotion as a focus of nursing practice aimed at capitalizing on the inherent capacities of women to establish health priorities, goals and strategies to improve their health. A descriptive survey with the purpose of ascertaining the influence of culture, social and health policies on nurses’ practice of health promotion was undertaken. Three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A sample of one hundred and thirty six nurses participated in the study. A validated questionnaire with a test-retest reliability coefficient (r) of 0.79 was used for data collection. Correlation analysis was carried out to test hypotheses. The results revealed that 132 (97.1%) participants were female with a mean (SD) age of 40 ± 7.29. Many participants 58 (42.6%) perceived that social policies have high influence on their practice of health promotion. The results also showed significant negative correlation between culture and practice of health promotion (r = -0.532; p = 0.01) while the practice of health promotion was significantly and positively correlated with social policies (r = 0.515; p = 0.01). It was recommended that negative cultural practices be addressed through social policies and health education of women on negative cultural practices in order to enhance the practice of health promotion for them.

Key words: Culture, health policy, health promotion, nursing practice of health promotion for women, social policies.