Empowerment: A Tool for the Nursing Professional's Performance in Health Promotion and Prevention

Abstract

Introduction: Empowerment is the personal development key to increasing self-care capacity. However, nursing professionals do not apply it as a tool in the permanent construction of knowledge or through which they strengthen their performance and professional capacity.

Objective: To systematize the available evidence on empowerment from the context in which nursing professionals work.

Methods: An integrative review was conducted between 2020 and 2021, of articles written in Spanish and English, published between 2012 and 2021 in national and international journals, as well as indexed in the databases Google Scholar, Handle, Scopus, ResearchGate, Redalyc and Dialnet. The guiding question was elaborated using the PICO framework. The search strategy was elaborated using the Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS) and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in English Empoderamiento/Empowerment, Enfermería en salud comunitaria/Community Health Nursing, Cuidados/Care, Promoción de Salud/Health Promotion, Prevención de salud/Health Prevention, Desempeño/Performance, as well as the Boolean operators AND and OR. The PRISMA flow diagram was used. Of the 100 identified articles, 25 were selected. Content analysis facilitated the systematization and organization of the bibliography, classified into three dimensions: educational process, management and performance.

Conclusions: The systematization and analysis of conceptualizations on empowerment showed diverse points of view and different positions. Empowerment was ratified as a tool in the professional performance of nursing in health promotion and prevention, as well as for its contribution to the strengthening and enrichment of the epistemic bases of the nursing science.