Nursing Health Promotion/Discussion Archives

Nursing Health Promotion/Discussion/Wk1.

(Nursing Health Promotion/Discussion.)

Public health nursing involves working with communities and populations as equal partners, and focusing on primary prevention and health promotion (Kulbok, Thatcher, Park, Meszaros, 2012). There are many types of public health nurses in the area I live in including home health nurses, health department nurses, free clinic nurses, and home hospice nurses. Community based nursing involves collaboration and partnerships with communities and populations to address health and social conditions and problems. The nurse I interviewed for this discussion, Jennifer, is a registered nurse who takes home call for Community Hospice, a locally owned hospice service in the Vidalia area. I have dealt with this facility on a personal and professional level and there is no greater community centered facility in our area more so than Community Hospice.

Q: What are your job responsibilities?

A: As an on-call nurse, my main job is new patient intakes after business hours. This includes going into the homes of patients who are admitted under hospice care. During these intake assessments it is my job to record and take vital signs, educate families and patients on the disease, prognosis, treatments, and hospice care, and to ensure that families and patients understand and agree with the plan of care. On routine visits it is my responsibility to again assess patients, record vital signs, as well as monitor any changes from previous visits and report changes to our providers on staff.

Q: Does a correlation exist between your job description and your practice?

A: Although she has a very clear job description laid out for her, she explains that her duties go far beyond the typical hands on patient care the typical nurse sees in the office or hospital setting. She explains hospice is a special kind of job where you not only care for the patient but patient’s families as well. She explains sometimes the care for the patient includes caring for them family and helping them cope with the prognosis of death.

Q: Are you involved in policy formulation that affects client services?

A: Jennifer describes her work environment and boss as exceptional. All staff are seen as equals and their opinions valued to the fullest. Each day they have a meeting where all staff who reports to the Hospice House that day go through reports as well as ideas to make their jobs successful. She states having supportive staff members makes it easy to help policy implementation and change.

Q: Do you belong to a professional organization related to your current job position?

A: Currently Jennifer explains she is not involved in an organization related to hospice care. However there is an organization that several of her fellow employees are members of which is the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). This organization’s mission is the largest nonprofit membership organization representing hospice and palliative care programs and professionals in the United States. The organization is committed to improving end-of-life care and expanding access to hospice care with the goal of profoundly enhancing quality of life for people dying in America and their loved ones (NHPCO 2018). This organization helps support and update hospice based nurses on any advances in their area of nursing as well as provide support.

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Topic 1: Child and Adolescent Health Risks

Obesity is not exclusive to adults. Each day, more and more children are finding themselves at risk for overweight and obesity. Childhood obesity often accompanies many of the obesity-related conditions adults affected by obesity often experience, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and more. Recent data shows that up to 80 percent of children affected by obesity will continue to be affected by obesity into adulthood (Lobstein, et all, 2015). Obesity impacts children in a variety of ways. First and foremost, a child’s health is impacted as they have now opened themselves up to a wide variety of health issues – issues that most of us didn’t experience until middle-age. In addition to health implications, there’s also one other area that children face which can be very serious – weight bias and bullying. Kids impacted by obesity often find themselves the target of bullying. This bullying can take place in the classroom, in your neighborhood and even in your own home. It is very important to recognize this type of behavior and address it quickly (Lobstein, et all, 2015). The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC), a nonprofit dedicated to educating and advocating for those affected by obesity, provides valuable resources on weight bullying.

Over the last decades, food has become more affordable to larger numbers of people as the price of food has decreased substantially relative to income and the concept of ‘food’ has changed from a means of nourishment to a marker of lifestyle and a source of pleasure. Clearly, increases in physical activity are not likely to offset an energy rich, poor nutritive diet. It takes between 1–2 hours of extremely vigorous activity to counteract a single large-sized (i.e., >=785 kcal) children’s meal at a fast food restaurant (Lobstein, et all, 2015). Frequent consumption of such a diet can hardly be counteracted by the average child or adult.

It has been hypothesized that a steady decline in physical activity among all age groups has heavily contributed to rising rates of obesity all around the world. Physical activity strongly influenced weight gain in a study of monozygotic twins (Rivera, et all, 2014). Numerous studies have shown that sedentary behaviors like watching television and playing computer games are associated with increased prevalence of obesity. Furthermore, parents report that they prefer having their children watch television at home rather than play outside unattended because parents are then able to complete their chores while keeping an eye on their children (Rivera, et all, 2014). In addition, increased proportions of children who are being driven to school and low participation rates in sports and physical education, particularly among adolescent girls, are also associated with increased obesity prevalence.

Almost all public health researchers and clinicians agree that prevention could be the key strategy for controlling the current epidemic of obesity. Prevention may include primary prevention of overweight or obesity itself, secondary prevention or avoidance of weight regains following weight loss, and prevention of further weight increases in obese individuals unable to lose weight (Rivera, et all, 2014). Until now, most approaches have focused on changing the behavior of individuals on diet and exercise and it seems that these strategies have had little impact on the growing increase of the obesity epidemic.

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