Promoting sexual health in nursing graduate courses: teachers' strategies

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Abstract

Experiences on health promoting strategies facilitate the implementation of practices that aim to improve individual and collective health.This is a qualitative and descriptive study that aims to test teachers'knowledge on health promotion and to identify the sexual health promoting strategies adopted by these professionals. Participants were five women's health professors from three universities of Fortaleza. Concerning knowledge on health promotion, interviewed professionals noted an interconnection between health promotion, quality of life, health education and self-care. On the other hand, the articulation between theoretical/practical knowledge and students' health promotion does not seem to occur in a planned way. Difficulties to promote students' sexual health were: long time between lessons, number of hours per discipline and addressed content.We conclude that teachers'knowledge regarding health promotion does not match with the real meaning of the proposal, and is limited to a few actions during health education. Considering that the students are mainly young women, the educator could play a transforming role by promoting discussions on sexual health.