Public Health Nursing

Public health nursing promotes and protects the health of population using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences. The most important focus of public health nursing is to market health and stop disease for entire population groups. It includes the identification of people who are in need for care but who have health problems that put themselves within the community in danger, such as those with infectious diseases.

Public health nursing follows a systematic process by which:

• The health care requirements of a population are assessed in order to identify families and individuals who would benefit from health promotion or who are at risk of illness, injury, disability or early death.
• A plan for interference is established with the community to meet identified needs that take into account available resources, the range of activities that contribute to health and the prevention of illness injury and disability.
• The results of the process are used as guidance and direct the current delivery of care, implementing of health resources, and the development of local, regional, state, and national health strategy and research to market health and stop diseases.

This includes supporting and providing care to individual members of the population.