ABSTRACT
Health education and health promotion might be espoused as a fundamental part of nursing, but Piper (2007b) notes that the extensive range of literature on health education and health promotion readily accessible in any nursing library or online is mostly of a pragmatic nature and concerned with ‘doing’. Piper (2007b) highlights that fundamental questions about purpose, fit with practice and detailed analysis of the different frameworks and models and their relevance for nursing, particularly in relation to specialist areas of practice, remain an underdeveloped area. Scrutiny and clarification of their philosophical foundations, their relationship to wider social theory and description of how to operationalise them were similarly found wanting.
