Essay on Public Health Nurses: Protecting and Promoting Population Health

Introduction

In the workplace area of public health, the public health nurses comprise the more significant percentage. The role of a public health nurse is to prevent, advocate, assess, educate, activism, and to evaluate public health (Hilliard & Boulton, 2016). One of their primary roles is to help in the prevention of diseases and to promote safety and health within the communities. Therefore, public health nursing is the practice of protecting and promoting populations health by applying the knowledge from the public health sciences, social sciences, and nursing. According to Nies and McEwen, community health nursing is a field of nursing that combines primary nursing and healthcare practice with public health nursing. The functions of a community health nurse comprise general and continuing practice that is curative, preventive, and rehabilitative. In this field, the basis of the philosophy care is that when attention is directed to the individuals, the family and the group, then it contributes to the health care of the population as a whole.

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The levels of prevention

The categorization of preventive health actions is done in three levels which are the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. The importance of having these actions categorized into these levels is that it makes it easy for health practitioners to focus efforts on vital health issues across all the stages of disease and wellness (Hilliard & Boulton, 2016). Primary prevention is the type of prevention aimed at preventing or stopping an injury or illness before it occurs. This is usually achieved through the prevention of factors or exposures to the hazards that may lead to injury or disease, eliminating unsafe or unhealthy behaviors that could lead to injury or illness, and increasing resistance to injury or disease in case of any exposure. An example of primary prevention is the immunization against infectious diseases to prevent individuals from contracting diseases.

Another level of prevention is the secondary prevention whose aim is to reduce the impact or the effect of a disease or an injury that has already taken place. According to Nies and McEwen, the significant ways through which primary prevention is usually done is by acting as soon as possible towards the treatment of an injury or disease to slow its progress. It is also done by educating individuals on the personal ways through which they can the reoccurrence of the injury, and initiating projects aimed at returning the people to their normal functioning and health to prevent long-term problems. An example of secondary prevention is the regular examination and screening of individuals to detect diseases or infections in their early stages such as breast cancer where they apply the use of mammograms.

Tertiary prevention is the very last level of prevention. This type of prevention aims to soften up the impact of a current injury or illness that has a lasting effect. There are diseases such as permanent impairment or chronic diseases whose implications are long term and therefore, the only best possible thing to do is to help the individuals to manage such conditions in order for their ability to function to be improved as much as possible, as well as their life expectancy and quality of life (Hilliard & Boulton, 2016). Examples of such preventions include chronic disease management programs and stroke or cardiac rehabilitation programs.

Roles and responsibilities of nurses in the community and public health nursing

The critical role of a community health nurse is to treat the patients (Cohen & Marshall, 2017). However, there are some additional roles which are also fundamental for a community health nurse, and they include offering education to the community members on how they can maintain their health to reduce disease and death occurrences. They are also researchers as they collect and use evidence in the execution of positive changes that would lead to better health within society. They are also caregivers and them cross-cultural, literacy, and language boundaries to shape the well-being and health of adults and children. According to Cohen and Marshall, (2017), the community health nurses may also have the obligation of distributing items related to health such as pregnancy tests and condoms. They are also advocates as they advocate on the local, federal, and state level to protect public health programs funding, provide better access to healthcare, and reduce health disparities.

Current issues faced by the community and public health nurses

There are new challenges that face the public health nursing workforce. One of the problems faced by these nurses is the environment. The nurses have to travel over long distances to ensure that they meet all their clients and this proves exhaustive to their career. Most of the roads in these areas are also not well maintained or developed. Another challenge is that they face violence at work. In Australia for instance, over 86% of remote area nurses revealed experiencing aggression or abuse at work while only 43% of the urban area nurses reported the same (Swider et al., 2013). They also receive delayed or limited support in events of severe incidents like violence. Another challenge is the challenge of workload whereby they tend to have excessive work, and this has adversely impacted the quality of the services they offer to the community members resulting in guilt or dissatisfaction.

References

Cohen, B. E., & Marshall, S. G. (2017). Does public health advocacy seek to redress health inequities? A scoping review. Health & social care in the community, 25(2), 309-328. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hsc.12320

Hilliard, T. M., & Boulton, M. L. (2016). Public health workforce research in review: a 25-year retrospective. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 42(5), S17-S28. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074937971200092X

Nies, M., McEwen, M. Community/Public Health Nursing: Promoting the Health of Populations. [University of Phoenix]. Retrieved from https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780323188197/

Swider, S. M., Krothe, J., Reyes, D., & Cravetz, M. (2013). The quad council practice competencies for public health nursing. Public Health Nursing, 30(6), 519-536. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phn.12090