Healthy eating support by community nurses: Determinants, training program and action perspective

Healthy eating can help prevent further care dependency in older people, placing community nurses (nurses) in a key position to support healthy eating of home-dwelling patients. This thesis aimed to investigate factors influencing nurses' healthy eating support practices; to develop and evaluate an evidence-based, postgraduate training program; and to explore an experience-based action perspective for enhancing the implementation of healthy eating support. The findings show that influencing factors are related to the nurse, the nurse-patient encounter, and cooperation and organisational context. Zooming in on nurse-related factors, the attitude, self-efficacy, motivation and ability (i.e. knowledge and skills) of nurses are associated with how often they support healthy eating. Based on the outcomes of this research, we developed a postgraduate training program. After following this program, nurses' knowledge, skills and self-efficacy have increased. Support from home care teams and organisations is essential in this regard to enable and facilitate nurses in sustainably and effectively implementing healthy eating support into daily routines.