The Health Belief Model is a psychological model that aims at explaining and predicting people’s health behaviors. The Health Belief Model was first prepared by Pender, Murdaugh, and Parson in the 1960s’ (Pender et al, 2006). It focuses much on the attitudes and the beliefs of individuals towards a particular disease and its treatment approaches. Its development came at a time when free tuberculosis health screening approaches had been considered a failure. After its development, the model has been significantly adapted for the exploration of various long and short-term health behaviors (Edberg, 2010). This includes sexual risk behaviors that lead to the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The assumption of this model is that people will adopt a health-seeking behavior if they believe that a health condition or disease can be avoided. Further, health-related behaviors are likely to be adopted by individuals who have a positive expectation that such responses would help them avoid negative health negativities (Edlin & Golanty, 2010). Such persons also seek health interventions if they believed that such responses would help them regain their lost health or cushion them against vulnerability to attack. The model has since found its importance in the nursing world as a guideline for helping patients to understand the significance of preventing diseases and illnesses (Pender et al, 2006). The Health Belief Model has been considered significant especially given that a person’s attitude towards any health precaution, treatment, and recovery influences determines the health decisions that they make in response to various health-related challenges.
Role of Institutional Review Boards in Nursing. Institutional review boards (IRS) are generally committees entrusted with the mandate of monitoring, approving and reviewing researches involving human beings (Bankert et al, 2006). These are biomedical and behavioral researches concerning humans. They are mandated with the responsibility of determining whether research is worth doing or if it will degrade human dignity or pose any potential threat to the human race (Marquis & Huston, 2009).
The Institutional Review Boards also have a duty to safeguard the rights and well-being of vulnerable people. These include the aged, people with mental challenges, expectant women and children among others (Bankert, 2006). In the field of nursing, the duties are not any different. For any research to be done within any department of nursing, the research committees must, first of all, confer the research (Bankert, 2006). The research committee must always guarantee the security of everyone involved in the research. This involves ensuring the protection of the rights and welfare of both patients and nurses.
One of their main duties is conducting a continuous review of all studies that are bound to have any involvement of patients and nurses before the actual research is undertaken (Bankert, 2006). They also review any procedure that will be undertaken but is not part of the normal practice of the health centre in question. These include the ordinary nursing practices and expected patient care in the given health center (Bankert, 2006). Furthermore, the research board in any nursing department is also expected to review the development of all the procedures that will be used in the research.
All the studies that have been reviewed can either be approved or disapproved depending on the findings of the board. However, all the approved studies have the green light of proceeding to the research level. Their approval of any research to be carried out is, however, restricted to a number of factors. They, for example, can only approve research where all the participants have consented to be part of the research. This board, therefore, plays an active and critical role in guiding nursing and healthcare practices in general.