NR361 Healthcare | The Role of a Public Health Nurse

Imagine that you are a public health nurse, and you and your colleagues have determined that the threat of a deadly new strain of influenza indicates a need for a mass inoculation program in your community. What public health data would have been used to determine the need for such a program? Where would you locate public health data? What data will be collected to determine the success of such a program? How might you communicate this to other communities or internationally?

Answer:

The role of a public health nurse requires them no advocate fighting, with the aim of making the community healthier (Maurer & Smith, 2013). This, there is a need recognize the scope of the problem with the use of national and local statistics and data.

Data will be collected from the Influenza Virus Database, an electronic database that provides the opportunity to draw comparisons between strains of influenza virus, which in turn will help in the rapid identification of the emergent variant, and facilitate the process of appropriate vaccine development and administration (Zhang et al., 2016). The website of the department of public health and environment, of the affected area will be consulted for gathering information on reports of previous influenza instances, the outbreak rates, number of people who had been hospitalized and the cases that resulted in death of the residents (Jones et al., 2014).

Extensive research will also be carried out with the help of electronic databases that will allow collection of information regarding the success of previous inoculation programs that were conducted with the aim of eradicating the identified disease from other communities. The website of World Health Organization will greatly facilitate in locating data about such mass immunization campaigns (Bustreo, Okwo-Bele & Kamara, 2015). Epidemiological studies will also help in evaluating the effectiveness of these mass vaccination programs.

The collected evidence will be disseminated to the community with the help of mass media campaigns, holding conferences, seminars, making presentations and maintaining regular communication with the program staff and key stakeholders. Thus, computerized systems will allow the secured exchange of health realted information, with respect to the influenza strain that has been recognized.

References

Bustreo, F., Okwo-Bele, J. M., & Kamara, L. (2015). World Health Organization perspectives on the contribution of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization on reducing child mortality. Archives of disease in childhood, 100(Suppl 1), S34-S37.

Jones, S. S., Rudin, R. S., Perry, T., & Shekelle, P. G. (2014). Health information technology: an updated systematic review with a focus on meaningful use. Annals of internal medicine, 160(1), 48-54.

Maurer, F. A., & Smith, C. M. (2013). Community/public health nursing practice: Health for families and populations. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Zhang, Y., Aevermann, B. D., Anderson, T. K., Burke, D. F., Dauphin, G., Gu, Z., ... & Li, X. (2016). Influenza Research Database: an integrated bioinformatics resource for influenza virus research. Nucleic acids research, 45(D1), D466-D474.