**8.3 The educational approach**

Nurses can also help sick people to broaden their health literacy capabilities and allow them to make significant adjustments to enhance their wellness. The educational method to health promotion assumes that providing people with information about their health will cause more healthy behavior. Nurses who undertake an educational method to health promotion offer individuals and groups information and facts concerning their health, allowing them to make informed decisions. In this method, the information about health is detailed and robust to allow the individual or group to have a clear understanding of the whole situation. This differs from the behavior change method in that the nurse does not try to encourage the person to change their behavior to a pre-determined pattern, but rather supports the individual to make an informed decision based on available information. One crucial result of the educational method is health literacy, which refers to personal, cognitive, and social capabilities that decide the capacity of people to access, comprehend, and use health information to promote and maintain good health.

### **8.4 The empowerment approach**

Nurses are trained to offer nursing services in diverse settings including health facilities, communities, schools, businesses, and so on. The first step in the nursing process in all levels of care is assessment. As such, nurses have information of the socio-cultural background and wishes of individuals and groups, which positions them to empower people in improving their health. For instance, the community health nurse empowers community members to manage their health using what they have in their community. This is possible because nurses will first undertake community assessment and identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. With this robust data from the community, the nurse will show the community members how to be healthy within their context, and community members are able to live their lives within the community without being sick. Moreover, even at the facility level, by enhancing open conversation with sick persons and their families, nurses are capable of eliciting expressed wishes and available resources that help to broaden personalized care plans. Through therapeutic

communication and empathy, nurses can enhance the intellectual wellness of sick people. Nurses are also engaged in industries and schools where they empower management, staff, and students to live healthy lives.
