SEARCHING FOR HEALTH NEEDS - THE WORK OF HEALTH VISITING

Searching out health needs and stimulating clients' awareness of healt h needs are two key principles of health visiting practice. However, t here is little empirically based knowledge of how health visitors carr y out these functions in their daily work. The purpose of this paper i s to describe and analyse health visitors' work in searching for healt h needs and promoting clients' awareness and actions in response to pr ofessionally identified needs. Forty-five health visitors were intervi ewed by means of semi-structured, conversational interviews. Findings identified that searching for health needs occurred in four types of s ituations. These were needs that were (a) client initiated, (b) easily seen, (c) 'opened up' by the health visitor, and (d) suspected and hi dden. Several processes were involved in searching for needs and stimu lating clients' awareness and actions, including: questioning, using i llustrations from other client situations, normalizing, assigning home work, assessing and intervening while searching, and responding to cue s. Timing played an important part in when and how interventions to se arch out needs occurred. This study contributes to our understanding o f how health visitors work in the community to promote individual and family health.