1. Select a specific primary health care (PHC) nurse role of interest to you (e.g. prison nurse, home based nursing, school nurse, women’s health nurse, men’s health nurse, sexual health nurse, substance use nurse, chronic illness nursing, rural health nursing, OH&S nursing, refugee nurse). Please ensure that the role selected is different from that you will experience on clinical placement. Describe the key attributes of this role and explain why it is considered a PHC nursing role.
2. Describe the general characteristics and relevant demographic information of the clientele this type of nurse is likely to provide health services for. If the clientele are a general population group, identify a geographical location such as a local government area (LGA) and discuss this in terms of the LGA data available.
3. Consider the characteristics/demographic data of the nurse’s client group to identify a relevant health issue of concern. Explain how you determined this issue as a concern relevant to the clientele. Provide justification for why the PHC nurse would engage in action to address this concern.
4. Identify three resources/initiativescurrently available or in place to support health promotion activity in relation the health issue of concern, which do not focus on the development of personal skills. Explain how these relate to the remaining promotion strategies outlined in the Ottawa Charter.
5. Propose two responses the PHC nurse could initiate to address the identified health issue for their client group, of which only one may relate to the development of personal skills. Provide a rational for each of these interventions. Outline the goal, objectives and strategies that will be used to implement each initiative, and justify these.
Answers
Rural Nurse
1. The specific PHC nurse role that has been chosen for this assignment is rural nurse.
The key attributes of rural nurses are based on their abilities to determine communities’ health needs. Rural nurses should have a good understanding of survival rates, morbidity and the creation of appropriate nursing care for persons and communities with diverse needs and resources. Another attribute is ability to identify particular needs and understand the constraints of limited resources to design care within local social norms. Besides, rural nurses might require resilience to offer care in remote and sparsely populated rural areas. Rural health nurses in Victoria noted that they assess, diagnose and treat minor patient illness manifestations. These nurses might provide the services independently or in collaboration with other medical professionals (Cant, Birks, Porter, Jacob, & Cooper, 2011).
Rural health nursing is considered as a PHC nursing role because the nurses play a fundamental role in enhancing health in the communities. Over the years, the rural health nursing role has shifted focus towards population health and community-based care services as well as multi-disciplinary decision making. The rural nurses mostly make decisions in partnership with the communities they serve. In most cases, rural nurses deliver care to individuals requiring a wide range of health care interventions. The common interventions are primary health care and even emergency care. In most rural settings, rural nurses deliver health services with the support of on-call or part-time medical professionals. In addition, rural health nursing is considered as PHC nursing role because the nurses focus on delivering preventive health services (Fooladi, 2015).
2. The clientele for this nursing role is the general public. Thus, the selected local government area (LGA) is the city of greater dandenong. In this LGA, there is high disease burden mainly infectious diseases and mental health. The most common illnesses are depression, anxiety obstetric complications, and tuberculosis. Regardless of the high disease burden, only 6% of the population present at emergency department while 7% is admitted in hospitals (Cheng, Russell, Bailes, & Block, 2011). The clientele consists of more men than women with a ratio of 4:3. The community has low level of English proficiency and secondary education achievement. There is higher unemployment and lower incomes than the rest of the population.
Based on the recent statistics, there is a high level of unemployment, low income and low health literacy among the selected clientele. About 59% of the population speaks a language other than English. It has been found that 14% of the people have inadequate English fluency. The median income per week is $34.3. The unemployment rate in the city of Greater Dandenong is 9.4%, which is higher compared to the city of Casey and metropolitan Melbourne. In metropolitan Melbourne and city of Casey, the unemployment rates are stand at 5.3% (Cheng, Russell, Bailes, & Block, 2011). Furthermore, there is a high number of persons living in the city of Greater Dandenong who were born oversea. The culture and beliefs of the people who were born oversea might impact the access to health care.
3. The relevant health issue of concern that has been identified in the city of Greater Dandenong is the prevalence of infectious diseases.
Infectious disease has been identified as a health issue of concern due to several factors. In this LGA, there are many refugees who come from different places such as Africa, Afghan and Asia regions. It is evident that infectious diseases in Australia are mainly high among the refugees. Tuberculosis is the most common infectious disease in this LGA. Other common infectious diseases are tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis, sexually transmitted infections, helminth infection and blood-borne viral infections (Murray, Davis, & Burgner, 2009). Additionally, there is low health literacy among the population, which might be a risk factor for the spread of infectious diseases (Yelland, et al., 2015).
The PHC nurse would engage in actions to address this concern because it is a community health issue. In this case, the rural nurses would help to address the issue of infectious diseases because it affects the community adversely. If the issue of infectious disease in the city of Greater Dandenong is not addressed effectively, there will be high mortality rate. In fact, infectious diseases are become a major health burden (Dye, 2015).
4. Practical initiatives have been developed to help the Greater Dandenong community in body weight control. The first intervention is the Community Health Service. This service aims to handle the issue of disease burden in the region. Also, the strategy aims to reduce inequalities by targeting the disadvantaged communities in remote areas (Carey, Wakerman, Humphreys, Buykx, & Lindeman, 2013). Secondly, the Victorian government introduced the Refugee health and wellbeing action plan 2008-2010 to address the needs of the persons living in the south east area specifically the Greater Dandenong. This initiative by the government of Victoria aims to address several health issues including chronic illnesses. Finally, there is a Refugee Health Nurse program (Riggs, et al., 2012).
The three policies discussed here are related to the creation of supportive environment and healthy public policy as outlined in the Ottawa Charter. Based on the health public policy, health promotion entails various aspects such as taxation, legislation as well as organizational change (Kumar & Preetha, 2012). Refugee Health Nurse Program and Refugee health and wellbeing action plan 2008-2010 exhibit the use of health policies to promote health. Besides, the Community Health Service relates to the creation of a supportive environment (Munster, 2008). Based on this Ottawa Charter principle, the community is viewed as an intricate institution comprising of both social and environmental factors. The health care initiatives also relate to the element of strengthening community actions and outlined by Ottawa Charter. Community action is strengthened by encouraging providers to care for people with infectious diseases in the community. The initiatives further exhibit the attributes of moving into the future and reorienting health services based on the Ottawa Charter. The initiatives aim to reorient the Australian health care system to suit the diverse culture as it moves into the future (Lin & Fawkes, 2007).
5. The two responses the PHC nurse could establish are the development of personal skills and improving community outreach.
Development of personal skills: Through the development of personal skills, the PHC nurses could educate the clientele on how to prevent infectious diseases. The nurses could focus on providing information on the available infectious diseases, how the infectious are spread and ways to prevent the spread. Simple interventions such as hand washing can help to reduce infectious diseases (Mathur, 2011). Goals and objectives: The initiative on the development of personal skills will have an objective of enhancing the clientele’s knowledge on how to avoid and control infectious disease. Another goal will be to help the clients embrace their current condition and initiatives to change. Strategies: The strategies that could be used are the introduction of a website, mobile app and helpline. These options would offer more information about infectious illnesses and self-management. Studies reveal that online resources are effective in offering education about infectious diseases (Barber & Stark, 2015).
Improving community outreach: This response could entail reaching the community and advocating for the use of the existing health programs. Clients who have infectious diseases will be reached through the community outreach programs. Community-based interventions (CBIs) are effective for addressing infectious disease such as HIV (Salam, Haroon, Ahmed, Das, & Bhutta, 2014). Objective and goals: The response will purpose to prevent and reduce the occurrence of adverse health conditions due to infectious. Nurses will aim to evaluate the prevalence of health complications associated with infectious diseases. Strategies: The PHC nurses will establish care centres in the Greater Dandenong in collaboration with metropolitan Melbourne and city of Casey. Additionally, the nurses will encourage the adoption of self-monitoring for infectious illnesses. Mobile technologies such as Pocket Medicine Infectious Diseases can be used by the clientele (Ventola, 2014).
Reference
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