Nurse and Physician Involvement in Health Risk Appraisals: An Integrative Review

Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors continue to be a strong contributor to chronic illness and death in the United States. Despite the health care system’s efforts to refocus on prevention, primary care visits remain acute care focused. Health risk appraisals are tools that can be used by primary care providers to enhance lifestyle behavior change and prevention efforts. The purpose of this integrative review is to examine nurse and physician use of health risk appraisals in primary care. A total of 26 national and international papers, selected through an electronic database and ancestry search, were reviewed. Identified nurse and physician interventions in addition to other programming included helping participants understand and interpret feedback, behavioral counseling, and development of plans to address unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The most common intervention was provision of telephonic nurse advice lines. Overall outcomes were positive. The use of these tools could be key to enhancing primary care prevention.