title: Health visitor education for today's Britain: Messages from a narrative review of the health visitor literature.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This paper draws on a narrative review of the literature, commissioned to support the Health Visitor Implementation Plan, and aimed at identifying messages about the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by health visitors to work within the current system of health care provision.
  
  
  METHODS
  The scoping study and narrative review used three complementary approaches: a broad search, a structured search, and a seminal paper search to identify empirical papers from the health visitor literature for review. The key inclusion criteria were messages of relevance for practice.
  
  
  METHODS
  378 papers were reviewed. These included empirical papers from the United Kingdom (UK) from 2004 to February 2012, older research identified in the seminal paper search and international literature from 2000 to January 2016.
  
  
  METHODS
  The review papers were read by members of the multidisciplinary research team which included health visitor academics, social scientists, and a clinical psychologist managed the international literature. Thematic content analysis was used to identify main messages. These were tabulated and shared between researchers in order to compare emergent findings and to confirm dominant themes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The analysis identified an 'orientation to practice' based on salutogenesis (health creation), human valuing (person-centred care), and viewing the person in situation (human ecology) as the aspirational core of health visitors' work. This was realised through home visiting, needs assessment, and relationship formation at different levels of service provision. A wide range of knowledge, skills, and abilities were required, including knowledge of health as a process and skills in engagement, building trust, and making professional judgments. These are currently difficult to impart within a 45week health visitor programme and are facilitated through ad hoc post-registration education and training. The international literature reported both similarities and differences between the working practices of health visitors in the UK and public health nurses worldwide. Challenges related to the education of each were identified.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The breadth and scope of knowledge, skills, and abilities required by health visitors make a review of current educational provision desirable. Three potential models for health visitor education are described.
authors.affiliation: Dept of Child and Adolescent Nursing and the Department of Adult Nursing, Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, King's College London, James Clerk Maxwell Building, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK. Electronic address: mary.malone@kcl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Malone
authors.affiliation: University of Central Lancashire School of Health, Lancashire, UK.
authors.forename: Karen A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Whittaker
authors.affiliation: Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, King's College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cowley
authors.affiliation: King's College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Ivanka
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ezhova
authors.affiliation: Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, King's College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Jill
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Maben
mesh_terms: D003152:Community Health Nursing / Q000193:education*; D004506:Education, Nursing / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D009730:Nursing Assessment / Q000592:standards; D011361:Professional Competence / Q000592:standards; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: Health visitor education; Health visitor practice; International; Knowledge, skills and abilities; Narrative review; Public health nurse