STUDENT THERESA DISCUSSION 1
Hello Everyone
Public Health Nursing
According to the American Public Health Association, it defines Public Health Nursing as, “the practice of promoting and protecting the health of populations using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences”.
Three Core functions of Public Health Nurse
- Assessment: It refers to systematically collecting data on the population, monitoring the population’s health status, and making information available about the health of the community. As a community nurse, you monitor health status to identify community health problems. As a community nurse who is going to educate a certain population, first you identify what could really be going on in that community, for example in African community, we have increase rate of child obesity, cigarette smoking among adolescence and increase rate of teen pregnancy. Next you diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community (Stanhope & Lancaster, n.d.).
- Policy development: It refers to the need to provide leadership in developing policies that support the health of the population, including the use of the scientific knowledge base in making decisions about policy. Here you inform, educate and empowered people about health issues, you mobilize community partnerships to identify and solve health problems. Lastly, you develop policies and plans that support individual and community health efforts (Stanhope & Lancaster, n.d.).
- Assurance: It refers to the role of public health in ensuring that essential community-oriented health services are available, which may include providing essential personal health services for those who would otherwise not receive them. As a community nurse, you enforce laws and regulations that protect health and ensure safety, next, you link people to needed personal health services, you assure a competent public health and personal health care workforce and lastly, you evaluate the effectiveness, accessibility, quality of personal and population-based health services (Stanhope & Lancaster, n.d.).
According to Godwin University (2019), the main difference between population- focused nursing practice and clinical nursing care is that the population focused nursing deals with the services provided to the community such as promoting and protecting the health of populations using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences as a whole, whereas clinical nursing deals with the practices performed in hospitals or healthcare organizations and the patients are cared for individually in a specific patient nurse ratio.
STUDENT ANNICK DISCUSSION 2
Public health is the art and science of improving communities’ health by making effective policies, education, and researching diseases prevention.
The main functions of public health nurses involve assessment, assurance, and the development of policies. Their assessment roles involve monitoring health status to locate health problems within a community and derive a practical solution and intervention measures. They are also responsible for investigating health problems within the community and deriving appropriate diagnoses.
Their roles in policy development involve educating, informing, and empowering the community about health issues to create awareness of specific health problems. Also, they are responsible for mobilizing community partnerships and actions to identify and solve health problems. Also, they are tasked with the development of plans and policies which provide health support. In insurance roles, they are mandated to enforce laws and regulations to ensure safety and protect community health. Also, they are responsible for connecting people to appropriate personal health services and providing health care services where it is not available (Bahadori, Teymourzadeh, Ravangard & Saadati, 2018). Additionally, they continually conduct research for new insights into emerging health problems. By providing appropriate education and training to other public health care workers, they ensure the competence of the health care workforce.
Population–focused nursing practice involves working within a larger community, caring for the entire population, and protecting health as the whole of the society. Also, they do not wait for patients to come to them but rather go to the communities to prevent diseases (Thomas & Rosser, 2018).
