COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will aim to enhance your knowledge of health promotion and disease prevention or build on your knowledge base to enhance your practice when working with patients or clients in the community with cancer. You will learn the foundational concepts that led to the evolution of health promotion as it is viewed today. By exploring the theoretical basis of health promotion, you will have a greater appreciation and understanding of population health, the social determinants of health, and primary care. Types of prevention, risk reduction strategies, and cancer screening are main topic areas covered. In this course, survivorship, an important topic area, will be addressed given the fact that patients or clients with cancer are living longer, and we need to ensure that we provide valuable health promotion and prevention patient education. Recognizing the increased use of complementary and alternative medicine by patients with cancer is also an important area that will be presented in this course. Finally, the principles of health behavior change and the basics of motivational interviewing will provide some concrete skills essential to assist you to support clients as they embark on behavior change. Learning these skills will be valuable to you and, the workshop will provide an opportunity to practice these skills with your peers.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
- By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Define health and health promotion, public health, population health, and primary care
- Describe the social determinants of health and their impact on health
- Recognize the impact of health disparities among sub-groups of the population
- Distinguish between health promotion and prevention
- Recognize the different types of prevention
- List major risk factors and risk reduction strategies
- Integrate prevention education into practice
- Define the rationale for early detection and screening
- Distinguish between opportunistic and population based screening
- Review cancer screening guidelines for at risk and high risk populations
- Recognize health behaviors of cancer survivors
- Describe the importance of health promotion/prevention education in this cohort
- Identify opportunities for “teachable” moments with this patient population
- Define complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and its use in the cancer population
- Describe safety and precautionary measures in using CAM
- Integrate assessment in practice using guidelines
- Describe the different stages of change in the Trans-theoretical Model
- Define the principles of motivational interviewing
- Integrate motivational interviewing principles and skills into practice
METHODS OF LEARNING
This course will be provided in an on-line environment.
- This self-directed approach allows students to progress through the six modules at their convenience either at home or work with the utilization of a computer; each module will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete
- Readings or website activities are meant to enhance the eLearning content
- On-line discussion and support will be provided during the seven week time-period required to complete the eLearning modules
Credits: 0.5 credits under Patient Teaching and Coaching.
Delivery: This course has previously been offered as a workshop. It will return as an online course.