The role of the Public Health Nursing in the Health Care Reform (Coursework Sample)

The Role of Public Health Nursing in the Health Care Reform First Name: Last Name: Institution:  The Role of Public Health Nursing in the Health Care Reform Public health nursing relates to the activities of ensuring the health of populations are protected with knowledge in nursing, social and public health sciences (American Public Health Association, 2013). It, therefore, brings together aspects of nursing and public health in an effort to improve the health of the people through a framework of education, engineering and enforcement. This is to imply that there will be a lot of aspects leading toward ensuring prevention and addressing issues that are pertinent to health. It is worth noting that the efforts of government agencies alone in improving health of the population is hardly enough. Public health nursing therefore comes in as being important in facilitating the health care reform, with the quality of factoring in all sectors of the society. Public health nursing adheres to the need to ensure health improvement of the population. It takes into consideration that public health is dogged by a lot of complexities with a lot of varieties based on context. It therefore requires application of knowledge and expertise unique to health care to assess situations, discover needs and opportunities leading to seeking solutions. As noted, public health nursing does not work as a solo entity in trying to address concerns in healthcare systems. Communities and populations are involved as partners in ensuring “primary prevention and health promotion” are enhanced (ANA, 2007). The role of public health nursing in health care reform is in line with the continued pressure on a global scale on health systems to meet the needs of the population in an effective, economic and efficient manner. In an era where health care is expanding to be oriented to the population and incorporate more preventive measures, public health nursing has developed to become a distinguishable specialty to broaden the scope and include more scientific knowledge. Problems related to urban living, environmental degradation, vulnerable groups such as the old, among other need a comprehensive approach towards addressing health needs. In addition to roles in monitoring, diagnosing and educating the people about health issues, there are a host of other duties associated with public health nursing in the health care reform. People need to be empowered, community partnerships mobilized in addition to developing policies ad plans that would be able to support health efforts of both individuals and the community. It is worth noting that the nurses’ community ranks as being the highest in the health workforce and despite their potential, they remain largely underutilized (Wilson, Whitaker & Whitford, 2012). Be it as it may, there seems to be a clear path to what public health nursing needs to address in the health care reform. However, all is not rosy, and some challenges affect the entire process. In as much as nurses comprise the largest number of the health sector workforce, based on what they are required to accomplish in public health nursing, there are issues related to the shortage. Besides, there still needs some aspect of the development of publi...