Public Health Nursing Essay

The roles and responsibilities of nurses vary based on the work settings. Nurses who are working in an acute care setting work with limited number of patients. They are responsible for the care and treatment of the patients once they accept the assignment. On the other hand, public health nursing is another specialty where nurses work with larger population within a community. The responsibilities of a public health nurse are comparatively more and different than other fields of nursing as they work to protect and support the health of the entire population. The agency that I was assigned to has a good learning environment for students who are interested in public health nursing. They are trying their best to provide children with the care they need such as preventative screening, treatment, diagnostic, treatment and follow-up. They work with a large number of children with health problems and their families. They also emphasize on the importance for the nurses to acquire unique knowledge, competencies and skills as they work within the population.

Public health nurse’s role ranges from being a community advocate, educator, providing variety of services in the community and so forth. They have a critical role in influencing the health of the population. According to Kulbok,

The nurses in this agency were very kind and helpful towards the students as they want all of us to succeed. In the first two program that I attended, one thing I noticed is that each nurses have a lot of work load which, according to them, is really hard to deal with. I would suggest that they hire more nurses to improve the delivery of nursing care to the children and their families. With adequate number of staffs and fair distribution of caseload, nurses can accurately supervise the children, assess their needs, and refer them to the right resources that they