Academic engagement through active participation in instructional activities related to the course objectives is paramount to your success in this course and future courses. Through interaction with your instructor and classmates, you will explore the course material and be provided with the best opportunity for objective and competency mastery. To begin this class, review the course objectives for each Topic, and then answer the following questions as this will help guide your instructor for course instruction.
Which weekly objectives do you have prior knowledge of and to what extent?
Which weekly objectives do you have no prior knowledge of?
What course-related topics would you like to discuss with your instructor and classmates? What questions or concerns do you have about this course?
After reviewing the topics for the next five weeks, I’ve come to find that I have a good basic knowledge of almost all of them. However, the one that I look forward to learning more about and discussing in this course is the specific policies and environmental issues section. I’d like to dive deep into the effectiveness of the U.S. healthcare system and see the ways it affects specific populations. This past month I spent time doing a medical internship abroad in Genova, Italy. For three weeks I was able to go to the different units (OBGYN, general surgeries, and cardio surgery) and observe the differences between practices and overall care between the US and Italy. I’m eager to see how I can integrate my experience into this paper having witnessed the differences between healthcare systems other than the United States. The objectives I have no prior knowledge of are the application of the epidemiology triangle and the communicable disease chain model, at least they are not currently ringing a bell. Nonetheless, it’ll be great to expand my knowledge (or refresh it) in both of those sections as we’ve seen them play big parts in our world with tragic events like the pandemic or even just the annual flu. Currently, my concerns revolve around finding a community representative and the process that goes with it. Like any course, the nerves and anxiety will eventually settle once getting started, but for now the unknown feels uncertain. In the end, I’m very excited to get started, learn, and collaborate with everyone. Thank you!
The community health nurse is a nurse that advocates for their patients and the community by promoting better community health outcomes (Green, 2018). The stakeholders of the community are those that are community leaders, individuals in government, or community-based organizations (Green, 2018). The community health nurse works closely with these entities to advocate for their patients and the community (Green, 2018). By collaboration with the stakeholders, the nurse can comprehensively understand unique issues and strengths of the community (Green, 2018). This collaboration will also help streamline the process of community health promotion and make sure that community resources are being utilized effectively (Green, 2018). It is important that community resources are appraised in community assessments because they bolster population health promotion. For example, if a community is lacking a center to help pregnant teenagers with basics like prenatal supplements and pregnancy education, the community is severely lacking in this category of resources and needs to address the issue. Another example is how emergency room healthcare workers can screen for pediatric patients’ visits and assess what community resources they might need (Liberman et al., 2022). Some resources for pediatric patients and families that are recommended to patients who qualify are nonprofits that focus on children’s health, mental health clinics, special education programs, social service agencies, substance abuse and addiction services, and financial assistance programs (Liberman et al., 2022). Community resources can also be provided for families that have children with feeding difficulties (Okada et al., 2022). Resources for these children include specialized pediatric feeding clinics, speech-language pathologist programs, and parent support groups (Okada et al., 2022).
References
Green, S. Z. (2018). Community & public health: The future of healthcare. Grand Canyon
University. (https://lc.gcumedia.com/nrs427vn/community-and-public-health-the-future-of-health-care/v1.1/#/home
Liberman, D. B., Phung K. Pham, & Semple-Hess, J. E. (2022). Social emergency medicine:
Capitalizing on the pediatric emergency department visit to screen and connect patients and families to community resources. Academic Pediatrics, 22(6), 1049–1056. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.acap.2021.12.028
Okada, J., Wilson, E., Wong, J., Luo, M., Fiechtner, L., & Simione, M. (2022). Financial impacts
and community resources utilization of children with feeding difficulties. BMC Pediatrics, 22(1), 508. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1186/s12887-022-03566-x