Community and public health nursing: looking to the future

Abstract

IntroductionThe times we live in are those of public health par excellence, as emphasized by the authors 1 , when stating that in the post-pandemic, public health leadership will become the new normal. But a recent United Nations report, on the Sustainable Development Goals 2020, about the third goal, ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all ages, highlights that the pandemic has jeopardized much of the progress made in public health, in reducing child mortality, vaccination, or treating chronic diseases. Thus, and looking at public health through the prism of a sustainable future, it is argued that it will not be enough to improve what we already do, but to change the way of establishing priorities, ways of organizing societies, activities, population groups and reformulating behaviors 2 . As nurses are the largest group of health workers in Portugal, as in other contexts, as the World Health Organization report in 2018 highlighted, their contributions are important, and the paths to be followed by nursing, for the health promotion and disease prevention, as we will briefly present here. AimsTo reflect future perspectives for community health and public health nursing, to contribute for better health. MethodCritical-reflective narrative, based on published evidence and official texts. Results and DiscussionBearing in mind that, in Regulation nº 613/2022, the Order of Nurses defined that the act of the nurse includes nursing techniques and therapeutic measures, related to prevention, promotion, maintenance, rehabilitation, palliation and recovery of people, groups or communities, and that the new Statute of the National Health Service provides for the presence of community health and public health specialist nurses in the Public Health Units, we must conclude that their importance has been reinforced. Currently, it is about developing skills to assess the health status of a community, training groups, coordinating health programs and epidemiological surveillance, as stated in the Regulation of the Order of Nurses, nº 428/2018. It is important, however, to present, by way of example, other current and future perspectives for this nursing, whether in terms of practice or even research, which become challenges for it. Thus, based on research at the genome level, it is identified that a third category of people's health risks has emerged, the genetic risk, which joins environmental and lifestyle risks. Therefore, authors argue that the relationship between public health and genomics is such that one cannot ignore its impact, and its technologies, for the benefit of the health of the population 3 . Other studies warn that hesitation in vaccinating, postponing the vaccine, or refusing it,

Estudo De Caso Na Investigação Em Enfermagem De Saúde Pública

“…Sendo os enfermeiros o maior grupo de trabalhadores em saúde, em Portugal, como frisou o relatório da Organização Mundial de Saúde (OMS, 2018), são importantes os seus contributos, para a promoção da saúde e prevenção da doença (Cunha et al, 2022).…”