Public Health Nursing & Disease Discussion

Public health professionals know that a disease is the direct result of an intricate relationship between causal agents, people who are prone to illness and environmental factors. These three elements are known as the epidemiologic triangle (Lancaster & Stanhope, 2020). In the given scenario about the migrant farm workers, the infectious agent is the tuberculosis (TB), the susceptible hosts are the Hispanic men who have contracted the TB, and the environmental factor is the rural county in which the men are working.

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As the community health nurse, Debbie should immediately notify her nursing supervisor. After reporting to her manager, a report of the outbreak should be called to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC says that it is mandatory for health professionals to report any suspected or actual cases of tuberculosis to a designated department within twenty four hours (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Nurses know that primary prevention of a disease means the actions taken in order to prevent. In the case of TB at Debbie’s clinic, primary interventions would be educating the public on signs and symptoms of TB as well as instructions on what to do if illness is suspected. Secondary interventions are also known as early disease prevention. In this case, secondary interventions could be a screening process. All people associated with the migrant workers infected could be tested and screened to rule out TB. Tertiary interventions focus on those already infected by a disease. Tertiary interventions in this scenario would be appropriate treatment and follow up care.

Similar interventions could be easily performed in any community. In the state of Arizona, there was a reported 198 cases of tuberculosis in 2015 with a rate of 2.9 per 100,000 (Arizona Department of Health Services, 2015). This means that educating the community and implementing screening processes would be beneficial to those living in Arizona. Some things to consider in my community would be the size of the city. The city of Phoenix is in the county of Maricopa which is considerably large compared to some rural counties. There is a large diverse population that includes homeless and undocumented immigrants. There is also a large community of people that do not speak English and many citizens, like those in Debbie’s clinic do not have health insurance.

References

Arizona Department of Health Services. (2015). Arizona Annual Tuberculosis Surveillance Report. https://www.azdhs.gov/documents/preparedness/epide…

Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2020). Public health nursing: Population-centered health care in the community (10th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.