Vulnerable Populations Essay

We often consider how community health nurses can support vulnerable populations. For this self-reflection, consider what unique assets or perspectives vulnerable populations can provide to nurses. Reflect on how you, as a professional nurse, hope to improve individual and social factors that contribute to vulnerability in populations. What public policies may affect these vulnerable populations? Vulnerable Populations Essay

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Guidelines for Submission: When writing journal assignments, include evidence-based sources as well as your own reflections on the topic. Use APA formatting for references and in-text citations. Submit journal assignment as a Word document.

These vulnerable populations according to Shi and Stevens (2005) experience disparities in access to care and have poorer health status than the population as a whole. Along with risks that these vulnerable populations are linked to, there are non-modifiable risk factors as well, called risk markers. These risk markers are characteristics that help I screening variables that mat be associated with poor health but not directly cause morbidity or mortality. An example of this can be race or sex. Healthy People 2010 has stated one if their goals includes the elimination of health disparities in the nation. They aim to overcome this by implementing state health initiatives that guide systematic approaches to help eliminate health disparities that disadvantaged and underserved populations face. Public health nurses, who work with vulnerable populations, can help with this mission by providing outreach, and assessing communities risk factors and exposures. For example, holding health fairs to increase the communities’ awareness of certain health issues with resources available to the population. Public health nurses can utilize outreach to help make health care more assessable to the communities they serve by implementing health education and counseling in areas the population congregate, for example: schools, community centers, churches and workplaces. Comprehensive services. Vulnerable Populations Essay

Stanhope and Lancaster (2008) define vulnerable populations as “those defined at a greater risk for poor health status and health care access”(p.712). The role of a public health nurse in contrast to a vulnerable population is to establish interventions to help break the cycle of vulnerability thus aiding to eliminate health disparities within the population. The term “risk” helps public health nurses establish a person probability of something happening to them. This epidemiological term is used with the triangle of host, agent and environment in contrast to ones health within a population. The author will discuss vulnerability as discovered within a community based on surveying the community and establishing risk and interventions on the intervention wheel and with concepts related to the human becoming school of thought in relation to poverty and alcoholism. The diagnosis that will be discussed throughout this paper is risk of alcoholism among the community of zip code 92509 related to poverty stressors .Vulnerable Populations Essay.
In an assessment factors such as physical environment, social environment, personal habits are all obtained to help establish risks that a population may have in correlation to the history and factors that influence a person’s health status and outcome within a web of causation. A web of causation according to Stanhope and Lancaster (2008) is “an epidemiological triangle, reflecting the complex interrelationships of numerous factors interact in, to increase or decrease a risk of disease.” Public health nurses can use this web of causality as a tool to help assign risk factors that impact a community (p.711). One’s education level, living conditions, poverty level, genetic factors and access to health care can all be applied

Abstract

PURPOSE OF REVIEW:

This review is designed to update readers on recent discussions and research regarding vulnerable populations in medicine, including patients who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, queer, in prison or labeled with a stigmatizing complex medical disease. Vulnerable Populations Essay.

RECENT FINDINGS:

Recent studies have more closely examined the effects of being part of a vulnerable population. Greater societal income inequality impacts those at the lower end of the income curve by increasing mortality and heightening the importance of individual personal situations. Recommendations from an extensive WHO report on the social determinants of health may affect social policy and use of public resources in Europe. Clinicians are undereducated about the lives and concerns of vulnerable populations, including LGBTQI persons, immigrants, physicians, prisoners, and families of patients with diseases considered ‘incompatible with life’. Vulnerable Populations Essay .

SUMMARY:

Greater understanding of the cause of the health effects of being socioeconomically disadvantaged or being a member of a vulnerable population may be the first steps toward specific policy recommendations. Professional medical organizations and advocacy groups should raise awareness, provide education, publish guidelines and define the goals for the medical care for certain vulnerable populations.Vulnerable populations are at risk for disparate healthcare access and outcomes because of economic, cultural, ethnic or health characteristics. Vulnerable populations include patients who are racial or ethnic minorities, children, elderly, socioeconomically disadvantaged, underinsured or those with certain medical conditions. Members of vulnerable populations often have health conditions that are exacerbated by unnecessarily inadequate healthcare.Vulnerable Populations Essay.