Standards of Practice Paper

Public Health nursing has a defined scope of practice and standards just as general nursing and other healthcare related careers. The American Nurses Association has defined the scope and standards in their book, Public Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice. The book discusses six Standards of Practice reflecting the nursing process and ten Standards of Professional Performance addressing professional standards for the field of public health nursing (American Nurses Associate, 2007). One specific standard of practice and standard of professional performance will be explained in detailed.

Standards of Practice

One of the Standards of Practice is assessment. Assessment is evaluating a person, place, or situation and is the initial step in any nursing process. In the assessment standard, the public health nurse assesses the population for any health concerns (American Nurses Association, 2007). This involves collection of data, interpretation of the data, and analysis of the problem. It is essential to know what information gathered is an urgent matter to the population or community. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind ethical, legal, and privacy issues in obtaining data. For example, if information is obtained through surveys or interviews, it is important to notify the participants that the information may be used for publication and consent is necessary.

Collection of data can include a number of methods: surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and observations. It is also important to include socioeconomic considerations, biological, psychological, cultural, and religious issues. This may impact the health status of a community gravely. If the community is a Seventh Day Adventist community such a...

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...oming theory plays a vital part in the application of public health nursing. Without the theory, truly understanding the community and population would be difficult. This would lead to not meeting the goal of public health nursing which is providing the optimum level of care and health to the community and population.

Works Cited

American Nurses Association. (2007). Public health nursing: scope and standards of practice. Silver Springs, MD: American Nurses Association.

Parse, R.R. (1999). Community: an alternative view. Nursing Science Quarterly 12(2), 119-124. Retrieved from CINAHL database. doi: 10.1177/08943189922106747

Parse, R.R. (2003). Community: a human becoming perspective. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Stanhope M. & Lancaster, J. (2008). Public health nursing: population-centered health care in the community (7th ed.). St. Louis: Mosby.