The state of empowerment counselling for healthy family lifestyles in well-child visits from the families’ and nurses’ perspectives: a cross sectional survey

Abstract

Primary care setting, namely the well-child visits, presents an obvious opportunity for promoting healthy family lifestyles and the prevention of childhood obesity. By their professional competence, nurses are in a good position to provide lifestyle counselling in the well-child visits. Such counselling should take the approach of empowerment, as advocated by the World Health Organization since the Ottawa Charter. However, the well-child visits’ scope of practice is demanding, and no empirical research on the practice of empowerment counselling in this context has been performed in Portugal. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the family and nurse perceived degree of empowerment counselling for healthy family lifestyles in Portuguese well-child visits and to explore the factors that may influence this practice.