Health promotion in nursing and cost-effectiveness.

Close examination of the different healthcare systems and the present economic crisis worldwide suggests that all health organizations should re-evaluate the concept of health promotion and its relationship to cost-effectiveness. When choosing the most efficient and cost-effective system, each nation's healthcare system must seriously start to implement strategies for the change. Health professions, including nursing, must change their vision of education both in academic and practice settings, to focus on health promotion and illness prevention. The key principle underlying this paper is to illustrate the importance of health promotion and cost-effectiveness being adopted by all health organizations worldwide, as well as to observe the experiences of selected counties in developing a health policy related to education in primary healthcare. The paper will include a plan adopted by the General Nursing Directorate (GND) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (SA), which contains a health promotion policy for the nursing administrations in all governmental primary healthcare centers in Saudi Arabia.