Public Health Nursing – wk 1 disc
Topic 1: Describe your current knowledge of public health nursing and provide specific examples of public health activities in your community.
Response 1: Karen
Public health nursing roots back as early as the 1800’s when Florence Nightingale first trained the first nurses to treat patients in their community. Now, public health nursing has expanded to improve the health of individuals in the community rather than treating the patient individually. The primary focus of public health nursing is to provided education, health promotion and health maintenance as well as disease prevention in treating the community as a whole and not just the individual (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2016). Some examples of public health nursing are vaccination clinics, wellness centers where nurses as well as other medical professionals provide volunteer service to check blood pressures and provide health education on diseases.
References
Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2016). Public Health Nursing: Population-Centered Health Care in the Community (9th Edition). Elsevier Health Sciences (US). https://online.vitalsource.com/books/9780323321532
Response 2: Yenlys
Public health nurses promote and safeguard the well-being of their communities. A variety of strategies, including expanding healthcare access, enhancing public health education and awareness, and promoting local, state, or federal policy change, can be employed to achieve this. Ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality healthcare is a major responsibility of public health nurses. They might try to enhance the accessibility of resources, provide care personally, or promote legislative reforms that would open access to healthcare to boost access. The improvement of public health education and awareness is another goal of public health nurses. The improvement of public health education and awareness is another goal of public health nurses. They might achieve this by offering data and materials, implementing public health education initiatives, or pushing for legislative changes that would enhance public health education and awareness.
Finally, public health nurses may promote national, state, or local policy reform. Working with elected officials, appearing before legislatures, or collaborating with advocacy organizations are all possible ways to do this.
References:
Crisp, N., Brownie, S., & Refsum, C. (2018). Nursing & Midwifery: The key to the rapid and cost-effective expansion of high-quality universal healthcare.
Coker, J. F., Martin, M. E., Simpson, R. M., & Lafortune, L. (2019). Frailty: an in-depth qualitative study exploring the views of community care staff. BMC geriatrics, 19(1), 1-12.
Topic 2: Analyze the roots of public health nursing and its influence on practice today. What significant changes or historical events have made public health what it is today?
Response 1: Dohar
Hi class, public health is “the practice of promoting and protecting the health of population using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health science” (The American Public Health Association, 2013). Early public health did not know about the cause of disease, and society tended to regard illness with a degree of resignation and insufficient public intervention. Today, public health involves the sociology of medicine, epidemiology, and science in preventing and controlling the disease. Nurses can impact public health by supporting policy, advocacy, and education regarding immunization, infection prevention, environmental health, or other healthcare crisis response.
Response 2: Sukhun
The public health movement in Europe began in the late 19th century in response to the appalling toll of death and disease among the working classes living in abject poverty in Northern Europe as a result of the industrial revolution. Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement (1893) in New York City, coined the term “Public health nurse”. She believed that public health nurses must treat social and economic problems, not simply take care of sick people. The public health nurse should be involved with the health of an entire neighborhood and cooperate with social agencies to help improve living conditions (Fee & Bu, 2010). Public health nursing influenced on how to teach healthful living and disease prevention. Nurses directly influence the health and wellbeing of patients. Therefore, nurses have to be prepared to react to public health crises. Public health nurses can educate people to improve their health in communities. Basically, they are promoting public wellness.
