Hodges' Health Career Model is a tool to help an individual or group develop ideas connected with a problem or issue.

Conceived by Brian E. Hodges in the United Kingdom, Hodges' Health Career Model was developed in health and social care, based on the Nursing field, but can be applied universally.


"The health career model is essentially concerned with the person in a social context. The notion of career derives from the intervention of the nurse being future orientated, increasing the health choices, health chances or health prospects of individuals or groups (including families) taking cognisance of the biography of the person or persons being helped. The person already has a biography that has been influenced by their physical and psychological make-up, the kinds of families and social networks they have experienced and the culture or geographical location in which they live. The health career is influenced by personal factors of the individual of physical or psychological origin and factors relating to the social world and the policies that govern daily life. The model is in effect situation focussed rather than person focussed requiring that all the possible contributing factors to the current situation and possible futures be examined if only to be discounted."

"The activities of nursing involve different kinds of knowledge some of which is impersonal, mechanical, objective in nature - from chemistry to procedures and decision making - and whilst other aspects of the nurses role requires more personal knowledge (of both nurse and client); such things as an appreciation of feelings, the development of self esteem or of personal growth.

These attributes:

Individual to Group
and
Mechanistic to Humanistic

- were placed on intersecting continuums. Then having identified four key subject disciplines of nursing Brian placed a key discipline (Interpersonal, Science, Sociology, Political) in each of the four quadrants formed by the intersecting axes, this comprises the subject disciplines level of the health career."