Public Health Nurse Education Accreditation and Credential
Public Health Nurse Education, Educational qualifications of public health nurses, How to Become a Public Health RN, Public Health Nursing, What is a Public Health Nurse, Public Health Nursing: Role and Responsibilities.
At the community and population levels, Public Health Nurses Education plays a significant role in health promotion, illness prevention, and control. Although public health nurses' employment obligations are typically thought to be restricted to direct patient care, they contribute significantly to population health on a daily basis through patient education, illness surveillance, and public health initiatives. In view of recent demographic and epidemiological trends, health sector reforms, and health workforce changes in the Americas, these contributions to public health are especially significant.
Because it is population-focused, as practitioners often work with community members who are not in hospitals or other health-care institutions, and community-focused, as practitioners focus on the relationship between population health and the environment which includes physical, biological, and socio-cultural factors in order to meet public health needs, public health nursing is a specialized field within the nursing profession.
Nurses in public health are concerned not only with direct patient care, but also with community and population health promotion and disease prevention efforts, which necessitate an interdisciplinary approach that includes nursing, public health, and social sciences.
Public health nurses provide a wide range of services to patients and community members, including education and epidemiological research, in a number of contexts with a variety of health actors. Despite the long history of public health nursing and efforts to define its scope and practice systematized data on the public health nursing workforce in the Americas is difficult to come by.
Nurses in public health play an essential role in promoting public health throughout the Americas, and they now make up the biggest group of professionals in the area. The number, job descriptions, and work responsibilities of this health personnel varied significantly. Furthermore, there are substantial disparities in the levels and types of public health nursing training and education. The fact that many nurses perform some or all of the basic activities of public health but are not designated public health nurses and/or are unfamiliar with the profession complicates regional disparities in characterizations of public health nursing. It's vital to remember that health personnel, particularly nurses, are in short supply across the Americas.
According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), nations in the Americas do not achieve the minimum human resource density of health workers per 10,000 people, highlighting the critical shortage of nurses required to sustain population health. Although the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said in 2001 that additional study was needed to determine the quantity and composition of the public health nursing workforce, data for many countries in the Americas is difficult to come by or nonexistent.
According to existing nursing statistics, there are a large number of assistants and auxiliary nurses in primary care settings who have direct contact with patients. Nurses with postgraduate degrees and/or training for administrative or research jobs are in short supply. Despite the fact that some nurses have more training than others, many of them perform the same tasks as nurses with less training.
Furthermore, health professional migration in the Americas exacerbates existing health system disparities and staffing shortages throughout the continent. Due to disparities in salary and working conditions, the migration of highly trained professionals surged in the 1990s. Migration is now strengthening health systems in rich nations while damaging health systems in low- and middle-income countries. More study is needed to understand the movement of health workers, particularly public health nurses, in order to satisfy the health system goals of nations in the Americas.
ACCREDITATION AND CREDENTIALING
The Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) was created in 1941 by a group of seven schools of public health (SPH) concerned about the expansion of public health education programmes. 6 To produce SPH guidelines and definitions, ASPH collaborated closely with APHA. APHA was in charge of accrediting graduate professional education in public health from 1945 to 1973, first focusing nearly entirely on SPH but subsequently expanding to other college and university settings. APHA and ASPH formed the independent Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) 15 in 1974. The evaluation of SPH was delegated to CEPH, which first focused on school accreditation.
CEPH was established in response to requests from practitioners and educators for accreditation of community health/preventive medicine programmes, as well as a request from the American Public Health Association (APHA) to assume additional responsibility for community health education programmes, in the late 1970s. These distinct programming categories were merged into a single public health programme category in 2005. Although CEPH is the accrediting agency for SPH, other organisations accredit specific SPH programmes. The Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education (CADE) and the Commission on Accreditation of Health Management Education (CAHME) are two such organisations (CAHME).
ASPH began as an organisation "representing university faculties concerned with graduate education of professional personnel for service in public health; to promote and improve such personnel's education and training, and to do such other things as may improve the supply of trained personnel for all phases of public health activity." ASPH grew into a nationwide organisation with CEPH-accredited members throughout time.
SPH has a presence not just in the United States, but also abroad, with an accredited school in Mexico and an associate member school in France that is undergoing accreditation. All CEPH-accredited member institutions are included in ASPH membership, which totalled 46 in 201 and graduates over 8,000 students each year. In the most recent time, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of schools and pupils. Six associate member institutions are expected to become fully recognised SPH over the next two years, and others have expressed an interest in becoming so. As states and private organisations understand the benefits of schools, and student enthusiasm develops, the growth of schools is projected to continue.
CEPH accredits roughly 75 public health programmes in a range of settings, such as medical schools' MPH programmes. Some of the programmes are not CEPH-approved. According to estimates from 2007 (Association for Prevention Teaching and Research; unpublished survey), CEPH-accredited programmes produce less than 1,300 graduates each year. It is unknown how many people have graduated from unaccredited colleges and programmes. Public health programmes and degrees are now available from a number of prominent for-profit online colleges. The expansion and quality of these initiatives are causing substantial worry.
The National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE) was established in September 2005 by ASPH, APHA, the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and the National Association of County and City Health Officials in an effort to establish public health as a recognized, certified profession. The mission of the NBPHE is to "ensure that students and graduates of CEPH-accredited public health institutions and programmes have mastered the knowledge and skills essential to modern public health." The NBPHE is a dynamic, self-governing organisation that creates, conducts, and assesses a voluntary certification test once a year. The test is open to graduates of CEPH-accredited schools and programmes. The number of examinees each year is limited (about 1,000) as of this writing. It's unclear how the exam will affect job availability, selection, wages, or the quality of the public health profession in the long run.
ACCREDITATION STANDARDS
The mission of CEPH is to enhance public health by ensuring the availability of qualified professionals who can recognize, prevent, and resolve community health issues. Promote quality in public health education through a continuous process of self-evaluation by institutions and programmes seeking accreditation, according to the Council's goals.
Encourage improvements in the quality of public health education through periodic review, consultation, research, publications, and other means; assure the public that institutions offering graduate instruction in public health have been evaluated and judged to meet standards essential for the conduct of such educational programmes, and assure the public that institutions offering graduate instruction in public health have been evaluated and judged to meet standards essential for the conduct of such educational programmes.
PUBLIC HEALTH NURSE EDUCATION FOR UNDERGRADUATES, HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND OTHERS
Academic public health in the United States continues to expand in size and prominence. The scope of public health education is increasing to encompass college and even high school students, as well as new collaborations across health professions and other professional degree programmes. The IOM's 2003 study, Who Will Keep the Public Healthy? predicted that public health education would become a basic body of knowledge for students not just at other health professional institutions but well beyond. The study specifically recommended a significant increase in master's level public health training for medical practitioners, stating the need to teach up to half of all medical school students at this level.
Inter-professional education encompasses much more than standard medical and public health education. When several professions' disciplines interact to develop the knowledge and abilities of professionals and students, it is considered as public health. Collaboration between public health schools and other schools and colleges within their respective institutions has a long history. Formal dual degree possibilities are among them. MPH/MD degrees, as well as degrees in law (MPH/JD), dentistry (MPH/DDS), social work (MPH/MSW), nursing (MPH/MSN), business (MPH/MBA), and veterinary medicine (MPH/DVM), are some of the most popular combined degrees. Schools of communications, journalism, information and library science, public policy, city and regional planning, education, and foreign affairs all offer dual degree programmes. Students can tailor programmes to their specific interests using these combinations. There is no conceptual limit to potential joint and dual degree programs; they are likely to increase in the coming years.
For long years, just a few colleges provided public health undergraduate programmes, including public health majors. An increasing interest in public health has led to the inclusion of public health in a wide range of undergraduate programmes. According to a study conducted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2008, 167 colleges offered undergraduate majors, minors, or emphases in public health. With 15 schools offering public health as a major specialization and 14 schools offering a minor concentration, 22 universities with SPH obviously dominate the sector, accounting for approximately 3,000 undergraduate students in 2008. In an article headed "For a Global Generation, Public Health is a Hot Field," the Washington Post captured this passion on the top page.
Public health as a topic is gaining in popularity among students worried about the world's population in the twenty-first century, and some potential candidates would like to be able to enter the area with less schooling. Additionally, options for public health education at the community college level are receiving more attention. SPH is attracting a record number of applicants, outpacing other health-related areas such as medicine. Between 1998 and 2008, the number of candidates increased by 75%, from around 20,000 to 35,000 per year.
Reference
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- Public Health Nursing and the Essential Functions of Public Health: Foundations forProfessional Practice in the 21st Century. Washington, DC, USA, 2001.) Cameron, R. Health Human Resources Trends in the Americas: Evidence for Action; PAHO/WHO: Washington, DC, USA, September 2006.
- 47o Consejo Directivo. In Proceedings of Pan American Health Organization; 47th Directive Council: Washington, DC, USA, September 25−29, 2006.
- Gebbie KM, Rosenstock L, Hernandez L, editors. Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Who will keep the public healthy? Educating public health professionals for the 21st century. Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2003.
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