The use of health action model to improve nurses competency in planning health education

     Nurses are essential to achieve health for all. The world development report suggests that most of the public health services can be delivered by nurses. Breastfeeding education is considered to be one of the priority areas. Many of the available health education (HE) Models are effective and powerful, yet not sufficient to assure people who need educational or environmental diagnosis. HE was defined in various different ways  and  the Health promotion is defined as “any combination of  HE and related organizational, economic and environmental supports for behavior conducive to health”. We aimed at enhancing the competency of PHC nurses in planning HE. Objectives: To measure the competency of the nurses in planning breastfeeding education in using the health action model. Methods: We adopted the " health action model", one of the well known technical model for HE. Beliefs and motivational factors are considered as (predisposing) , individual skills and environment are considered as (enabling), the normative pressures is considered as (reinforcing) each of which can influence the intention to action. A pre-test and post-test educational intervention. We used validated multiple choice Questions( MCQ) to assess the nurses knowledge on individual HE and short-essay questions, to measure their competency on breastfeeding education. Results: Total of 61nurses trained to use the health action model in planning HE. Considering the passing score is  ≥65% ; 9 nurses Passed  the pre-test with median score of 53% whereas 37 nurses passed  the post-test with median score of 68%.The difference in the median score was statistically significant. Conclusion: The study indicated that the nurses benefited from training on health action model by shifting up the median score. HCWs in the hospitals can be trained using same model to increase the rate of initiating and enhancing exclusive breastfeeding. In conclusion, HE is a part of health promotion and its effectiveness will be enhanced by good public health policy.