Abstract

One of the essential tasks, which are fulfilled by health resort medicine, is health education, giving a chance to decrease morbidity of many civilization illnesses and decrease mortality among young people. All patients staying in a health resort should be simultaneously treated and competently educated.

The aim of this paper is to present patients’ opinions about health education conducted by health resort nurses.

The study took place in 2006 among patients of Health Resort “Tęcza” in Ustka. All patients staying there since April to November 2006 (171 people) were asked individually to fulfill anonymous questionnaires.

In the opinion of about a half of the surveyed patients, nurses thoroughly informed them about the method, the purpose and the advantages of ordered and performed physiotherapy procedures. However, over 2/3 of the surveyed patients did not get from nurses any instructions about activities and interventions that a patient may carry out at home. In the patients’ opinion the most profitable and comprehensible forms of health education conducted by health resort nurse are: lectures, talks, talks with multimedia presentations and talks followed by discussions. More than a half of the patients was not informed about lectures which took place during their stay in the health resort. About 1/3 of the surveyed patients stated that educational activities conducted by nurses motive them to change their lifestyle but 36% of them think that these activities had only a partial effect.