Nursing Interventions to Improve Men’s Health
27 September 2018
The Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) has launched a new report on how community nurses can improve the health of male patients. The report was launched at the QNI’s annual conference on 24 September.
The report is informed by the work of nine nursing teams who were awarded funding by The QNI for year-long projects in 2017. The projects were led by nurses in various specialisms in the community and primary care including sexual health, general practice, homeless health, Health Visiting and integrated services including mental health.
These projects covered a very wide range of physical and mental health issues, including improving men’s uptake of National Health Service (NHS) Health Checks and their wider use of general practice, engaging military veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a new treatment programme and enhancing the health and wellbeing of men taking antipsychotic medication, providing a foot care service to homeless men, increasing the uptake of sexual health screening by university students, supporting men who are transitioning to fatherhood and engaging obesemen in the pre-retirement age range in a weight management programme.
The objectives, rationale, methodology and outcomes of each of the nine projects are described in the report. The report also lists a range of resources about men’s health and headline guidance about working with male patients.
Notes to Editors
Printed copies of the report are available from the QNI.
The QNI’s Fund for Innovation and Leadership Programme was supported with a grant of £105,000 received in 2017 from the Burdett Trust for Nursing. The QNI successful applied to the Trust’s empowerment grants programme 2016, which focused on Men’s Health and Emergent Longer-term Conditions. The aim was to support nurse-led projects that helped to define proactive strategies and interventions, promoting better self-care and reversing the negative impact of undetected and untreated longer-term health problems in men.
The QNI report was written by Peter Baker, Director of Global Action on Men’s Health and an independent consultant on men’s health issues.
Nurses working in the community are highly motivated to improve the health of patients, their families and carers – and the community they live in. There are specific and well documented challenges to improving the health of male patients of all ages. The wide range of nursing roles in the community – and their diverse and holistic approaches to care – enables nurses to work withmen to improve their physical, mental and emotional health. The outstanding success of the nine men’s health projects described in this report clearly demonstrate the impact and long-term benefit of nurse-led interventions.
Dr Crystal Oldman CBE, QNI Chief ExecutiveCommunity nurses have played a leading role in tackling men’s health problems over the past 25 years. This new report aims to share good practice from the QNI men’s health projects and to encourage and enable more nurses to do what they can to address the high rates of premature and avoidable death in men, as well as specific issues like mental health, cancer and heart disease. Action to improve men’s health would be good news for men themselves, their partners and children, the health service and the wider economy – in short, it is the right thing to do.
Peter Baker, report author
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