Public Health Issue, Essay Example

Public Health Emerging Issue That Affects Nursing practice

An emerging public health issue that now affects nursing practice relates to domestic violence. In many states across the country it has become mandatory that nurses report domestic violence. While this is a measure to protect women and abused children; many times it seems an awkward situation for a nurse whose role formerly was to intercept in cases of ill health. New definitions of violence have also become controversial in addressing this emerging public health issue(Stanhope & Lancaster, 2010). No one can deny its impact in public health practice because ultimately, an abused spouse or child faces severe emotional trauma along with physical ones too. Therefore, it is a public health concern, but nurses have to learn to embrace this new trend occurring in the discipline – the role of reporter of violence instead of disease (Watts & Zimmerman, 2002).

Educational Preparedness for Public Health Nurses to practice roles as home health, hospice, schools and occupational health

Public health nursing curriculum seldom caters for hospice and home health. However, public health nursing competences offer scope for development of these skills during public health interventions within a parish. There are eight domains of core competencies in public health nursing practice linking training with interventions. They encompass analyzing and assessment of skills; policy development and program planning of skills;  articulating communication skills; cultural competency skills development; community dimensions of practice skills; public health sciences skills; financial planning and management skills and leadership and systems thinking skills (The Council on Linkages between Academic and Public Health Practice, 2010).

References

Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2010). Foundation of Nursing in the Community-Oriented Practice (4th ed). St Louis. Mosby

The Council on Linkages between Academic and Public Health Practice (2010). Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals. Retrieved on March 10^th, 2014 from http://www.phf.org/resourcestools/Documents/Core_Competencies_for_Public_Health_Professionals_2010May.pd

Watts, T., & Zimmerman, C. (2002). Violence against women: Global scope and magnitude. The Lancet, 359 (9313); 1232–1237