A modern person can live peacefully for up to eighty years or more. However, even ten thousand years ago, reaching a thirty-year age mark was considered a good success. Such a qualitative leap is possible due to a number of factors: quality nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, comfortable living conditions and medicine. Each of these factors is divided into many different components. If we talk about medicine, one of the main roles here is played by sanitary-educational work among the country's population.
Introductory information
What is this kind of work? Health education is a combination of educational, upbringing, propaganda and campaigning activities that pursue the goals of creating a healthy lifestyle, familiarizing the population with the basics of disease prevention, and increasing working capacity. Health education also contributes to the preservation and strengthening of the health of individuals, to increase the period of active life.
In all of this, the prophylactic focus plays a huge role. Its level largely depends on the existing socio-economic, political and scientific-technical living conditions. It should be noted that the roots of prevention originate in ancient times. The prevention of diseases due to the observance of certain rules of personal hygiene and the provision of a balanced diet occupied an important place already in the medical practice of ancient civilizations. But the scientific basis for prevention began to be developed only in the nineteenth century. A lot of this was facilitated by the study of the environment and its role in the emergence and subsequent spread of diseases.
Separately, it is worth noting the achievements of such disciplines as microbiology, physiology and hygiene. In the 19th century, many medical scientists saw the future in the development of social prevention along with treatment.
How is the preventive work being carried out now?
Considering this issue, we dwell only on the Russian Federation, since it is impossible to cover all countries in one article. The great surgeon Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov said: "The future belongs to preventive medicine." His words were prophetic. After all, diseases are much easier to prevent, to prevent them from developing than to then treat them. Nowadays, this approach is enshrined in legislative and regulatory instruments for regulating public relations. The main sphere of its influence is the area of public health protection in order to ensure harmonious and eliminate conditions and factors that adversely affect the health of the population. Sunlight work performs the following tasks:
1. Dissemination of hygiene and medical knowledge.
2. Nurturing skills to maintain and strengthen health.
3. Improving the quality of the sanitary-hygienic culture.
In this case, it is necessary to take into account gender, age, climatic and geographical features, as well as a number of other factors that make it possible to maintain a high level of health. Both individual (individual persons) and public (for example, collective immunity) health are distinguished. In addition, important non-material factors (social, spiritual, moral, political, living conditions of the population) can be distinguished. To better understand all this, you need to start with organizational principles, that is, with law 52-FZ “On the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population”. What interesting information can be gleaned from it?
What legislation has prepared for us
Federal Law of March 30, 1999 No. 52- “On the Sanitary and Epidemiological Well-Being of the Population” formed the regulatory framework for all concepts and subsequent regulatory documents. Attention is paid to people, the conditions of our living, environmental factors, harmful effects, favorable and safe conditions, conditions, as well as a number of bureaucratic concepts.
What are the usual phrases for us from the point of view of legislation? Sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population is considered as the health of society and the habitat of individuals, in which there is no harmful effect of various factors on them, which provides favorable conditions for life. What can affect people according to the law? It identifies such environmental factors:
1. Biological (they include parasitic, bacterial, viral and others).
2. Chemical.
3. Physical (vibration, ultrasound, noise, infrasound, thermal, ionizing and other types of radiation).
4. Social (water supply, nutrition, working conditions, leisure, life).
All this should be taken into account in enlightenment work. If it is carried out on a private initiative, then the provisions of the law should be taken as recommendations for implementation. If sanitary-educational work is carried out within the framework of the state program, then following the above provisions is a must.
What are the principles of educational work?
Consider what points are the basis of this activity. The basic principles of health education are:
1. It is necessary to reach the general population and carry out widespread activity in this direction.
2. Sanitary and hygienic skills need to be developed in order to ensure the preservation and subsequent strengthening of people's health.
3. All activities should be comprehensive and contribute to a high result.
4. Information disseminated should be relevant to specific conditions. For example, in our latitudes, malaria is not a very big problem. Ticks are more relevant for our latitudes.
5. The measures taken should be differentiated and targeted, should include an impact on certain groups of the population, and also be organically related to the activities of medical institutions.
6. Activities are carried out taking into account local conditions and tasks.
If we formulate the above more briefly, it should be said that the basic principles are:
1. Science. Promoted provisions should be rational, validated and consistent with the current state of practice.
2. Massiveness. This means that all staff should be involved in health education in order to reach the largest possible audience.
3. Purposefulness. It involves the selection of the main direction of work, as well as the choice of the target audience for which it will be conducted.
4. Availability of the materials presented.
Who carries out educational work
It is only natural that this is most entrusted to medical personnel. According to the current order of the Ministry of Health, mid-level employees should devote four hours a month to promoting healthy lifestyles at the expense of their working time. But this is not the only thing. So, the nurse’s sanitary-educational work provides for familiarization with the rules of stay in medical institutions, the use of various equipment and auxiliary instruments. Top management is also entrusted with functions, but of a more controlling nature in relation to medical workers, although nothing prevents the management of clinics from working with patients and the general public in special events.
Separately, you should recall the health education service. Additionally, there are a number of services, departments and units that are engaged in organizational and methodological work. Their responsibilities include the development of plans, coordination of activities of various institutions, taking into account the tasks of health care, as well as proposals and wishes of the population.
How is this done?
Sanitary-educational work among the population is carried out using methods of individual, group and mass information. It takes on an oral, printed and visual form. A particularly important role in this process is played by print, television, radio, and cinema. The protection of health and the development of useful hygiene skills are of considerable interest to the popular medical literature.
In addition, these issues are regularly or periodically addressed in the pages of a number of magazines and newspapers. Mass editions are produced of memos, leaflets, brochures, booklets and posters. Considerable attention is also paid to the so-called small forms. These include micro-posters on bookmarks for books, matchboxes, on wrappers of various products. In parallel, interviews, lectures, group discussions, thematic evenings, health schools, round-table discussions, conferences, and oral journals are held.
Where such work is given special attention
Particular attention is paid to health education in pre-school and primary school. What is being taught there? In pre-school educational institutions, much attention is paid to personal hygiene and proper behavior. Children are taught to wash their hands before eating, to keep clean in bed and other similar moments. As they grow older, less and less attention is paid to this, as many children can control many moments on their own. If in the first grade a reminder about hand washing occurs regularly, then in the fourth, such control by adults is, as a rule, no longer necessary.
But this should be done reasonably. A competent and adequate health education plan should be drawn up, which must be taken as a basis. If you act in an unorganized and chaotic way, you can get less efficiency from the actions taken. The same health education at the school should complete the main cycle, forming an already trained and educated person. If you start to work, for example, from the sixth grade, it will not be so effective and more costly, given how much money you have to spend on treatment due to non-compliance by students with hygiene.
Used tools
The goals of health education cannot be achieved unless a wide arsenal of approaches is used. Consider what they are:
1. Sanitary Bulletin. He is assigned the role of one of the most intelligible means of propaganda. It is carried out in the form of an illustrated health education newspaper, which focuses solely on one topic. It should be relevant and take into account the challenges facing modern healthcare. It may also be consistent with seasonal epidemiological conditions. The sanitary bulletin consists of two parts - text and illustrations. Information should be written in a intelligible and understandable mass language, without the use of medical terminology.
In addition, examples of proper hygienic behavior are illustrated, cases from medical practice are described. All this decoration complements: photographs, drawings, applications. They should be elegant and illustrate the material, but in no case duplicate it. It is possible to use several images, but the main meaning should be borne by one of them. The sanitary bulletin ends with a call or a slogan.
2. Health corner. It focuses on the benefits of physical education, sports and a balanced diet, talks about the dangers of drug addiction, smoking, drinking. You can make a photo montage. A board of questions and answers, which should be useful and brief, will not be superfluous. Before creating a health corner, it will not be superfluous to carry out some preparatory work: coordinate its organization with the leadership, choose a place, materials for manufacturing.
Other means
How is health education possible? The following propaganda tools should be mentioned:
1. Oral magazines. This is a comprehensive form of reporting. It can be considered as imitation, since it is built on the same principles as periodicals. Here, not only health workers, but also law enforcement officers, juvenile inspectors, lawyers can be involved in educational work. It is necessary to consider not only medical issues, but also those that affect social, moral and legal aspects.
2. Disputes. They are ways of polemic discussion of an actual, educational or moral problem. Crucial here is the choice of topic. The dispute is used as a tool for collective search, discussion and subsequent resolution of problems that concern the population. It is very good when not only specialists but also ordinary citizens are involved in the debate. Clash, conflict of opinion, differences in views, demands, life experience, tastes and knowledge leads to the analysis of phenomena. The purpose of the debate is to highlight and support leading edge opinion, as well as to convince everyone of its correctness.
3. Conference. It is a form of propaganda close to a dispute. Its peculiarity is the presence of a pre-designed program, as well as fixed performances by both specialists and simply involved citizens. Oral forms include thematic evenings, round tables, evening questions and answers. It is advisable that the audience be prepared to perceive the topic. For this, stands can be created, a book exhibition organized, conversations and lectures held.
Conclusion
Health education should cover all aspects that affect public health. Labor and professional activities (creating healthy working and living conditions), the prevention of infectious diseases, improving water supply and water use - all this is of interest and should be considered.
For example, one of the most important tasks is education on occupational health measures in agricultural work. It is necessary to prevent injuries, poisoning by pesticides, explain the requirements for the delivery, storage and purification of water in the field. Also, special attention should be paid to anti-alcohol propaganda, to clarify the dangers of smoking. Now almost everyone knows that smoking and drinking adversely affect the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, lead to mental problems, contribute to myocardial infarction, coronary disease, chronic diseases of the bronchi and larynx, negatively affect the digestive tract, contribute to cancer development.