The Application of Salutogenesis in Healthcare Settings

The application of salutogenesis in curative settings is specific, since it is about implementing salutogenesis into a territory which is still predominantly dominated by the paradigm of pathogenesis. But a case can be made that health care and its different curative settings would profit by integrating the principles of salutogenesis into their quality philosophy and management. Health gain for patients, their families, for health care professionals, and citizen could be improved by using a salutogenic orientation, parts of the salutogenic model and the concept and instrument of the sense of coherence in health care practice, research, and policy. This chapter summarizes how and why this could be done in different kinds of curative and other health care settings and what the actual status of practice and research using concepts and instruments from salutogenesis in these settings already is and how it could be further developed. The specific health care settings included are: salutogenic architecture in health care settings, the application of salutogenesis in hospitals, in mental health care settings, in the training of health professionals, in vocational rehabilitation settings, to aged and highly aged persons: residential care and community—dwelling settings, and in health development in youth with chronic conditions. Even, if for most health care settings health promotion practice still is limited, and outside hospitals salutogenic research is scarce, there exists enough promising evidence to recommend more extended integration of salutogenesis into health care practice and more and more systematic and complex salutogenic research in health care settings.