Reflection on Learning

In healthcare, one of the interventions adopted to promote healthy living and well-being is the change in the behavior of the individuals. The behavioral changes refer to the process of transforming and modifying human behavior. In public health, it refers to the broad range of activities as well as the strategies that are being adopted to focus on the individual, community, and the environmental influences on behavior. Nurses depend on several behavioral change models or theories to ensure that there is health promotion through influencing changes in the unhealthy behaviors of the patient to healthy ones. This discussion is therefore focused on the transtheoretical model of behavior change (White et al., 2016).

The steps or components of the change model or theory

This theory assesses an individual's preparedness to act on the new healthy behaviors, and providing the needed approaches or the process of change to help in guiding a person. This model is consisting of constructs like the stages of change, the process of change, levels of change, self-efficacy, and the decisional balance. The stage of change is the temporal dimension of the behavioral change and in this case, change is considered to be involving the progress via phases. In the pre-contemplation stage i.e. there is no intention being shown by a person to make a move in the predictable future and are not well informed about the issues with their behaviors. In the contemplation stage or getting ready, individuals start to acknowledge that their behaviors are causing problems and are starting to recognize the pros and the cons of their ongoing actions (Liu et al., 2018).

In the preparation stage or readiness, individuals have the intention of taking action on the immediate future and they start with the small steps towards changing their behaviors. In the action stage, people are already made an overt change in the modification of the behavioral problems and have started acquiring new and healthy behaviors. The maintenance stage is involving the stage where the individuals have managed to sustain the action for not less than six months and are making efforts to ensure that there is no relapse. The termination stage is whereby people are having zero contemplation and are sure that the possibility of returning to old behaviors is zero(Liu et al., 2018).

In the process of change as a construct of this model, there is consciousness, dramatic relief, individual assessment, re-assessment of the environment, social liberation, self-liberation, help with the relationships, counter-conditioning, managing reinforcement, and the control of the stimulus. The decisional balance as a construct of this model is the reflection of the person's comparing the benefits from the pros and cons of changed behavior. The self-efficacy is a construct of circumstances particular confidence that individuals have that help them in coping with highly risk state of affairs devoid of relapse to unhealthy or high-risk behaviors. The level of change as a construct is involving the identification of the complexity of the presenting issue and it is based on the levels of symptoms or situation issues, present maladaptive cognitions, present interpersonal conflicts, family or the system's conflicts, and the long-lasting intrapersonal conflicts (Liu et al., 2018).

Whether the theory is containing the component for appraising the evidence

The transtheoretical model emerged as a result of studies that involved the examination of the smokers who quit their smoking habit on their own with other who required treatment to enable them to understand the reasons why some individuals can quit the smoking habit on their own. The findings from this study reveal that the quitting process requires preparation and readiness. Therefore, this theory is focused on the decision making process by the individuals. Therefore, it is considered as an intentional change model. The model is operating on the assumption that individuals are not changing their behaviors quickly and decisively, but in a continuous and cyclical process (Liu et al., 2018).

Whether the model contains the component for networking with stakeholders during all the phase

The key constructs of this theory such as the process of changes require collaboration between the patient, family member or caregiver, and the healthcare providers. The presence of these individuals helps in bringing positive perceptions about the behavioral changes that are being proposed on the client. For example in the management of the bodyweight for the patient diagnosed with obesity, for the client to engage in regular exercise in physical activity, he must be having positive thoughts and the good behavior in the process of change. This is important in pushing the client and assisting in ensuring that they remained motivated to take part in the physical activity (Chamberlain College of Nursing, 2019).

Whether the theory contains a model for the identification of the barriers and addressing the barriers to implementation

In the decisional balance as one of the constructs of this theory, there is a measurement of the pros and the cons that are considered are the comparative potential gains and the losses. The process of balancing between the pros and cons varies and it depends on the type of stage of change that a person is in. the pros and the cons are considered as the benefit that motivated a person to make an effort in changing the behavior. The pros and cons in this construct are also considered as the barriers that refrain people to be actively involved in the behavioral change activities. In this case, the barriers are addressed by the process of perceiving more benefits in the behavioral change than the disadvantages. People adopt positive behaviorial modification towards the later stages and this helps in overcoming the barriers (Liu et al., 2018).

References

Chamberlain College of Nursing. (2019). NR-701 Week 4: Change Theory and Models for Change Intervention [Online lesson]. Adtalem. Liu, K., Kueh, Y. C., Arifin, W. N., Kim, Y., & Kuan, G. (2018). Application of transtheoretical model on behavioral changes, and amount of physical activity among university’s students. Frontiers in psychology,, 9, 2402. doi:org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02402 White, K. M., Dudley-, B. S., & Terhaar, M. F. (2016). Translation of evidence into nursing and health care (2 ed.). Springer Publishing Company.