Conceptual Model for Women's Health

Lee, Kyung Hye

Abstract

There has recently been an increased interest in women's health from, various disciplines, with different perspectives presented according to each profession's academic background. This has led to many instances of incorrectly defining, or misinterpretation, of the issues even among professionals. Nurse scholars as well as practitioners who work in women's health care need to have a clear conceptual understanding of women's health in order to build a body of knowledge, delineate curricular activities, and set directions for professional nursing interventions. In addition, a conceptual model that may be directly utilized in practice is needed to maintain and promote women's health issues. The purpose of this study was to apply a Hybrid model, analyzing conceptual definitions and discussions related to women's health gathered from review of the literature. Further to compare analyticals the concepts and properties observed from field work, so as to present a final definition of women's health and, build a conceptual framework for a united comprehensive perspective on the concept as well as on nursing practice. Data collection and analysis consisted of a theoretical stage, field work stage, and final analysis. a heterogeneous group of professionals and lay persons, 39 in all, participated in the field work. Study findings include several subconcepts under the concept of women's health : a women's whole life, holistic health, quality of life, awareness of being a woman, individual nursing, self care ability, reproductive health, and family health. Thus, a comprehensive definition was built, i. e., "Women's health care be defined as improvement in the quality of life of women through attainment of holistic health throughout the life span. With reproductive health at the core, the concept is directly related to family and national health, and includes taking care of one's own health based on awareness of being a woman and utilizing self care activities. Women's health care issues are unique and allow various responses, therefore women's health professionals need to apply individual approaches to reach solutions in attaining holistic health and improving quality of life." The constructual factors of women's health were found to be reproductive functions, diseases more common in woman, self actualization, mental health, women's health policies, sexuality, midlife changes, and marital relations, with each factor having more than three properties. Positive factors affecting women's health were found to be a normal childbearing process, a healthy lifestyle, active health management, health information, support and resources, and interpersonal relationships Negative factors were found to be overwhelming role stress, cultural oppression, gender inequality, distorted sexual identity, economic difficulties, misuse and/or abuse of substances, and stress. The model of women's health may be visualized as a balance scale set upon a woman's life, supporting 4 concentric circles. The innermost circle and second circle incorporate conceptual definitions of women's health, and the outer two circles represent the constructional factors and properties of women's health. Each circle has its own color that symbolizes the conceptual meaning. Positive and negative factors are represented as weights at either end of the scale, and are affected by nursing intervention, i. e., health and wellness increase when positive factors are stronger, whereas disease and illness increase when negative factors are stronger. This model is only a preliminary effort and requires much discussion and testing to be further developed. Continuous research is also required.