Future Career Role, Essay Example

As a future nurse practitioner, it would be my responsibility to assess whether the presence of a major outbreak of infectious disease is realistic and how to determine how I could help prevent the spread of this illness at the place of my employment. To do so, it is first necessary to determine the symptoms of the disease as they related to already existing illnesses.  The degree to which the illness is transmissible from person to person is of particular concern in the hospital setting due to the large number of patients with compromised immune systems present. Therefore, it may be essential to quarantine patients with disease symptoms based on their severity and the risk of the patients. Next, understanding a similarity between symptoms of a new illness and an already existing disease can provide health care practitioners information about how these diseases can be treated in a manner that will reduce the severity of its impacts.

During such a disease outbreak, it is important for health care practitioners to avoid epidemiologic traps to help manage the outbreak. In particular, we cannot make any assumptions about the illness without first observing its characteristics. If it is rapidly transmitting through the population, health care professionals must first attempt to understand its patterns and associated health impacts before trying to classify it. This is relevant with regards to the cause of disease; by studying these patterns, health professionals can avoid describing confounding relationships and instead focus on causality. Furthermore, it is important for professionals to act without bias when determining causes and potential treatment. Even though it is helpful to compare a disease outbreak to pre-existing diseases, it is important for individuals studying public health to look for the nuances of the disease pattern and symptoms in a manner that will allow them to identify a new or evolved disease if it is present.