Life-long learning and continuing professional development (CPD) are the processes by which professionals, such as nurses, develop and improve their practice.
There are many ways to address your CPD: formally, by attending courses, study days and workshops; or informally, through private study and reflection.
Reading articles in professional journals is a good way of keeping up to date with what is going on in the field of practice, but reflecting on what you have learned from the articles is not always easy.
These questions are designed to help you identify what you have learned from studying the article. They will also help you to clarify what you can apply in practice, what you did not understand, and what you need to explore further.
1 Which disease do unfit and inactive people have double the risk of succumbing to?
a) Kidney disease
b) Multiple sclerosis
c) Cardio-vascular disease
d) Osteoarthritis
2 What project is an example of a new scheme?
a) New Opportunities
b) Paths to Health
c) Treadmill Workstation
d) Walking Buses
3 What type of walking is suggested as being the best for health?
a) Slow
b) Moderate
c) Brisk
d) Power
4 Walking a mile burns up how many calories?
a) 10
b) 50
c) 100
d) 1,000
5 Who developed the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day to keep fit and healthy?
a) The Finnish
b) The Germans
c) The Americans
d) The Japanese
6 What is the name of the device that counts the number of steps you take?
a) A treadmill
b) A pedometer
c) A ladder
d) A stepper
7 What is the ‘talk test’?
a) The ability to hold a conversation while walking
b) The ability to hold a conversation while running
c) The ability to hold a conversation when doing any sort of exercise
d) The ability to talk for one minute on any given subject
8 Who lost more weight and reported greater reductions in waist circumference?
a) Short-distance walkers
b) Long-distance walkers
c) Joggers
d) Marathon runners
9 Which philosophers recommended walking for health?
a) Descartes and Rousseau
b) Plato and Locke
c) Aristotle and Archimedes
d) Hippocrates and Socrates
10 What do pedometers and pulse monitors allow you to do?
a) Set goals, monitor performance and give feedback on performance
b) Set goals and give feedback on performance
c) Set goals andmonitor performance
d) Monitor and give feedback on performance
Answers
1. c – Visit the Resources list below to update your knowledge and find out more about the risks of heart disease and stroke from inactivity and lack of exercise.
2. b – Although these are all new schemes to help people to be more active, Paths to Health is the one mentioned in the text as being additional to the others. Explore each of these schemes (details given in the Resources list below). Consider whether any of them would be useful for your company or clients.
3. c – Find out your heart rate training zone using the calculation given in the text. Then find out how fast you have to walk to obtain and maintain that speed for 10 minutes.
4. c
5. d
6. b – Do you have a pedometer? If not consider getting one – or better still, ask your employer to consider issuing them to staff as part of a get-fit campaign.
7. a
8. a – Here you will need a tape measure if you organise a campaign to see the results of the exercise.
9. d
10. a – This would be a great way to run a health and fitness campaign at work and enable you to evaluate the effectiveness of such a campaign. There are thoughts that it can reduce sickness absence, and gathering statistics would show the positive results of your work.
Online resources on walking for health to help in your research and educational needs
This is the website of the British Heart Foundation’s Walking the Way to Health Initiative. It aims to encourage people, particularly those who take little exercise, to do regular short walks in their communities. They support more than 525 local health walk schemes. Go online to find the walks nearest to your location.
The European Heart Network (EHN) is a Brussels-based alliance of heart foundations and like-minded, non-governmental organisations throughout Europe, with member organisations in 26 countries. It plays a leading role in the prevention and reduction of cardiovascular disease through advocacy, networking and education so that it is no longer a major cause of premature death and disability throughout Europe. It published a number of papers on this and many other health promotion topics, which can be downloaded free from the website.
The Walking Bus concept is the new, safe, healthy and environmentally friendly approach to walking large groups of children to and from school instead of driving them there, alleviating school-run traffic congestion in the process This website is primarily aimed at schools. However, many OH services give advice on health to local authorities and school staff, plus parents are our clients too, and they may need to know more about the scheme. All the information about this scheme can be found on this website.
This is a national charity promoting walking for health and the development of multi-use paths and networks in Scotland. However, it appears that English counties have a similar system in place via the local county website: eg, Oxfordshire ‘Paths for All’.
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