ABSTRACT
Healthcare professionals need to accept the challenge to become agents of change, nudging, motivating, educating, coaching and supporting individuals throughout the process of change. To do this, providers of healthcare need to understand the nature of change, assess the readiness of individuals to change and communicate in ways that facilitate behavioural change. The practice of health education and promotion on strategies in helping people change is based on a number of theories and models. The theories or models include the health action model, the health belief model, the theory of reasoned action, the trans-theoretical stages of change model, social learning theory, social cognitive theory, the theory of planned behaviour, community development and models of organisational change. When planning work on behaviour change with individuals, NICE (2007) suggested that a number of concepts drawn from the psychological literature are helpful. These concepts include:
• outcome expectancies (helping people to develop accurate knowledge about the health consequences of their behaviours)
• personal relevance (emphasising the personal salience of health behaviours) • positive attitude (promoting positive feelings towards the outcomes of behaviour
change)
j Discuss the nature of motivation and readiness to change.
