Public Health Nursing

PHN Mission Statement: As leaders of holistic wellness, we empower communities with preventative education and skills to promote healthy individuals.

Public Health Nursing’s main focus is to promote health and prevent disease, disability and injury to the surrounding population and communities. Our public health efforts focus on preventing problems. We think of prevention in 3 ways.

Primary Prevention:

This stops a problem before it ever starts.
i.e. A TDAP shot prevents whooping cough.

Secondary Prevention:

This identifies a problem early. Everything is done to stop it from getting worse.
i.e. A patient has routine blood work done. It shows high cholesterol. They begin taking a baby aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

Tertiary prevention:

This slows down complications of a chronic health condition.
i.e. Teaching a diabetic patient how to take medications regularly. This controls blood sugar and avoids long term damage to the body.

Services

Public Health Nursing conducts visits to homes, communities, schools and clinics to provide patient care, counseling, and instruction in preventative, curative and rehabilitative health matters Monitors health status to identify community health problems, and diagnoses and investigates health problems and health hazards; participates with interdisciplinary teams to plan health related activities. Analyzes the collected assessment data for communities/populations. School health. Flu clinics. Emergency Preparedness. Car Seat program. Elder care and fall prevention. Postpartum Visits. Precious Child Program. Tiger Tot Program.

Public Health Nursing’s goal is to work collaboratively with other internal departments/programs, external facilities/organizations, and patients to provide the best care plan. While respecting their cultural needs and beliefs. Our home visiting services are provided on a referral basis and include the following: