Public Health Nurses’ Role In Communicable Disease Control Essays Examples

Public health programs enhance the health status of a population to ensure high productivity for economic and social development. The control of communicable diseases is pertinent to achieving better living standards for people and enhancing the quality of life. According to Healey (2004), control of communicable diseases involves investigations or assessments and response programs. Primarily, public health nursing is essential in surveillance assessments of the types, number of cases and monitoring trends or patterns of occurrence in a population. Undoubtedly, nurses help in the control of communicable diseases through conducting assessments, policy development and provision of assurance.
Nurses have the responsibility to monitor the environmental health and welfare of people in a community. In addition, it is the role of nurses to identify and improve the status of the environment in order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. The role, as mentioned above, is achievable through conducting diagnoses and investigations of environmental health hazards before enforcing measures to handle the situation. For example, nurses conduct follow-up investigations in a community that entails interviewing people affected by various types of communicable diseases. The information collected from interviews is useful for planning and designing control programs such as improving sanitation, washing hands before eating among others.

Policy Development

According to Healey (2004), a public health policy entails a framework that is pertinent to managing the health activities of a community. The public health policies are formed based on the information gathered by nurses during their community and environmental health status assessments. Nurses are central to the implementation of public health policies that provide guidelines for the control of communicable diseases. Usually, nurses provide a community with education and information to empower them with knowledge regarding communicable diseases. In addition, the nurses mobilize community partnerships and give substantial input in the development of policies to improve individual, environmental and communal health.

Assurance

In terms of assurance, the nurses become relevant in the control of communicable diseases through availing the essential health services and functions to a community. Usually, this may involve, enforcing environmental laws and regulations, providing qualified staff to manage environmental health and conducting research to find innovative solutions to curb communicable diseases. In addition, nurses play a pertinent role in evaluating accessibility, effectiveness and quality aspects in the control of communicable diseases that allow for the provision of quality public health services that otherwise e may be unavailable.

Conclusion

Public health programs enhance the health status of a population to ensure high productivity for economic and social development. Public health nursing is essential in surveillance assessments of the types, number of cases and monitoring trends or patterns of occurrence in a population. For this reason, focusing health services on a population is essential for the control of communicable diseases.

References

Healey, J. (2004). Communicable diseases. Thirroul, N.S.W: Spinney Press.