History of Public Health & Roles of Nurses Core Functions - 825 Words

History of Public Health & Roles of Nurses: Core Functions (Essay Sample) Content: HISTORY OF PUBLIC HEALTHName:Institution:Date: Public health nursing is one of the technical branches in medical sciences. The public health nurses face a lot of challenges and have a lot of duties to execute to the public. They have great concern about the safety of lives of people in the society. Unlike other nurses who just have a direct responsibility for a single patient at ago, the public health nurses have the responsibility to taking care of the whole population at a time. The public health nurses are charged with the accountability to take care of everyone in the society (Lundy, et al. 2001). It is their duty t6o ensure there is health security to everyone. They have a role to educate people about their health standards and safety in the society. The purpose of the essay is to give an insightful description of the history of public nursing, the role of Walid Lillian and proved e a clear description of the roles of public nurses.History of public health nursi ng and roles of Lillian Wald and Henry Street SettlementPublic health nursing originated from England. The key personality that contributed to the introduction of public health in England in the year 1896 was Florence Nightingale (Lewenson, et al. 2006). She contributed heavily to organizing the public district health nursing in London. She assisted in assigning the nurses some particular locations in London who was to give medical assistance to the people of London (Berwin, 2004). It is from that perspective that the current nursing gained its momentum. However, nursing in the United States of American had a lot of credit to the Pioneering nurse in America by the name Lillian World. However, public health nursing in the US began in the late 1800s. Lillian Wald initiated the Henry Street settlement. In the Settlement, he organized the nurses and made them live next to their places of work. The nurses worked as a team in the areas. The first place was in New York City (Lewenson, et al, 2006). The nurses helped in the revolution of Public health, and they ensured that they nursed the patients in the homes where they stayed. In America, she is referred to as the mother of public nursing since she is the one who even came up with the words public health nursing.Role of a public health nursePublic health nurses have a variety of roles in the society. However, the most fundamental role of any public health nurse is to help in prevention. The nurses are to facilitate prevention of diseases, injury, and disability besides the premature loss of lives of people in the society as a whole. In their seek for prevention, the public health nurses work in association with other professionals in the field. Among other professionals that they work with include the physicians, nutritionists, health educators and the environmental health specialists among others (Lundy, et al. 2001). Moreover, they also involve the society in their activities to ensure that they form part of th eir processes. Collaboration with the community makes the nurses have an easy time in their bid to eradicate these diseases, injuries, and premature death very quickly.Another significant role of a public health nurse is to give information about the availability of local health facilities in the area.Moreover, they also help in have a duty to monitor and identify health risks and trends that will pose great challenges to the health of people in a particular community and in a given time.Moreover, the public health nurses also have a duty to educate the society about the importance and how to take necessary action for improve their health standards in the community (Lewenson, 1996). They have the responsibility to teach people how to maintain good health in their respective homes or any other working place. They also have the obligation to educate the society about the importance of living a healthy life for ones health. Among other ways, they would show the public to help them ha ve a healthy life is by teaching them to stop usage of some drugs like tobacco. Besides, they teach them to have a proper diet, playing protected sex, and doing regular physical exercise to make them physically fit.Nonetheless, the public health nurses also have the duty to ensure that people live in healthy environment. Therefore, they may times spend their time in monitoring the cleaning of the entire environment around their working places. They have to ensure that the environment at large is clean all the time. Among other activities that they do in or...