May 12, 2022

Public Health

Today’s lecture was focused on the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through public health. We discussed the many disparities contributing to health including food swamps which are areas dense in fast food options, language barriers in different communities, and a lack of trust in healthcare because of poor outcomes or racism. Public health is a delicate balance between choice and what is good for the entirety of society. A diagram that displays this well is:

On the personal level, persuasion would be telling people what to do. An example of this would be persuading people to get a COVID vaccine or wear a mask in order to be able to do certain things. Counseling and education would give people all the information they need to make a personal, informed health decision. You can tell people how to prevent heart disease all you want, but it is up to the person to decide their lifestyle.

On a larger scale, legislation would include the laws for the good of society. We talked about the legislation about tobacco control in depth. There are laws increasing the age to buy tobacco and raising taxes on it. Ever since the MPOWER interventions were put into place by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006, we have see a decrease in the number of tobacco users; however, men still smoke more than women and the average smoking age is around 50 for both sexes. Additionally, government campaigns limit public advertisement and display graphic images on the boxes. I actually went to a store and asked to see one of the warning labels and this is what I saw:

Community development is when a community identifies a problem and gets help to support for themselves. An example of this would be wanting to improve the sidewalks or roads so that it is safer for children to get to school or fighting drug use in the community.

Conference- Mental Health Nursing

After our lecture, we went to a local medical conference where nurses presented their research papers. One of the lectures I went to was advocating for the conscientious objection to forced pharmaceutical interventions. Forced pharmaceutical interventions refer to the restraint and injection of sedating drugs into an unwilling psychiatric patient that is a harm to themselves or others. The lecturer Jonathan Gadsby revealed that some nurses battle a moral dilemma over this. In the situations where a nurse does not feel it right to give someone medication, he believes it should be up to the nurse to conscientiously object. While nurses who are not advanced prescribers should not claim to know medications better than their medical colleagues, a nurse is still responsible for the medications they deliver, right or wrong. Nurses need to know correct dosages, how drugs interact with another, and inform patients about proper usage. It should absolutely be within their right to choose to object if they feel morally obligated to. In conclusion, even if a nurse only objects once in their life, this way of thinking has the potential to change the discussion about when forced pharmaceutical interventions are appropriate.

Adult Nursing Belonging Group

Once we returned from the conference, we popped in to an adult nursing belonging group. They were celebrating International Nurses Day so we played a trivia game where we tried to guess what country nurses practice in. One of the questions asked what country has a home birth rate and I guessed right that it was the Netherlands!

Additionally We met some first year nursing students at Birmingham City University and we chatted about some of the differences in our programs. While we had just finished our first year, the students were telling us that their final clinical rotation of first year had not begun yet! Since the BCU nursing program is only 3 years, they have classes through the summer session and do a 50/50 split of theory (lectures) and practice (clinicals). This is different from the University of Pittsburgh where we start clinical rotations sophomore year and slowly increase the amount through our final 3 years. I doubt that our clinical adds up to 50% in total. Meeting them was a really cool experience.

Skills Practice and Care Enhancement (SPACE)

Our last stop of the day was at SPACE which is an interactive lab area for healthcare students to practice skills in a safe environment. While we were there, we went to different stations. First, I started at an anatomy quiz section where we labeled different models. I got it super fast, but sadly I mixed two of the answers up, oops! Then, I moved on to a hand washing station. I did pretty good at washing off the glitter lotion. In between sections, I played around with some of their models and spoke with professors about wound care. I look forward to learning more about this stuff when we start practicing in the study lab at Pitt! Finally, I listened in to CPR tips. The tips I found super interesting were approaching the person from the side so that they do not turn their neck (in case of neck injury) and then asking the question are you ok in both ears in case of deafness on one side. We concluded our time at SPACE with a case study simulation about delivering life changing news to family members and the patient. Some tips I gathered were to first make sure the family member is mentally stable and physically in a safe, private area before delivering bad news. I should be reassuring, but cannot offer any definite answers because no one ever really knows what will happen. To simulate a phone call delivery, my roommate Courtney bravely volunteered call the patient’s “mother” and did a great job. I left the session today knowing a lot more about how to deliver news to a family!