2 Role of the Nurse Practitioners and DNPs in Public Health Emergencies

2

Role of the Nurse Practitioners and DNPs in Public Health Emergencies

Michelle Romero

Long Island University

NUR 621 Family Theory

Professor Lucy Mensah

July 12 ,2024

Role of the Nurse Practitioners and DNPs in Public Health Emergencies

Introduction

Ethics are critical in healthcare and clinical practice and will guide professionals in offering competent, fair, and compassionate services. It is important to apply principles such as autonomy, nonmaleficence, justice, beneficence, and others when making care decisions (Vearrier & Henderson, 2021). Notably, in public health emergencies, ethics can help professionals to deal with different situations. Usually, emergencies could strain resources and increase the chances of ethical dilemmas, especially when healthcare professionals are working with people from diverse backgrounds. Thus, nurse practitioners (NPs) and doctors of nursing practice (DNPs) have to step in and apply ethical principles to ensure care delivery happens ethically and meets the needs of the populations they serve. The current paper aims to explore the role of NPs and DNPs in public health emergencies and how they can use various approaches and principles to deliver services to culturally diverse populations.

An Overview of the Social and Cultural Issues

During public health emergencies, DNPs and NPs have to recognize social and cultural issues that can influence healthcare access and outcomes. After identifying these issues, it would be important to develop approaches that could help to address them. In particular, potential social and cultural issues include socioeconomic status, language barriers, health literacy, and cultural beliefs. In particular, the language barrier is a critical concern for minorities, affects communication, and impacts service delivery during health emergencies (Piller et al., 2020). Also, cultural beliefs about public health emergencies differ among individuals and populations. Lack of trust due to past injustices can also affect care delivery and accessibility during emergencies.

Integration to Improve Care Quality and Accessibility

Effective communication is important and should be facilitated during public health emergencies. DNPs and NPs should use communication approaches that align with the cultural practices of the populations or people they are serving. Culturally appropriate techniques would enable the professionals to communicate in ways that respect the cultural beliefs of diverse populations. In other cases, as O’Brien et al. (2018) indicate, healthcare professionals should utilize interpreters to communicate with people. It will ensure that there is information exchange to help address various issues during public health emergencies.

Also, communities may need different interventions and it would be important to adapt strategies appropriately. Mainly, DNPs and NPs should show respect for cultural practices and beliefs by adopting the correct interventions for specific populations. Also, they should make necessary adjustments to fit specific populations. Notably, public education is a critical intervention during public health emergencies to address health literacy and improve response. Healthcare professionals should align education with the cultural values of populations and individuals. In particular, cultural competence can help healthcare professionals adapt interventions to meet the unique needs that diverse individuals or populations have (Nair & Adetayo, 2019). It would ensure that patient-provider interactions improve during public health emergencies. It would enhance adherence to interventions and improve patient satisfaction. With these approaches, it would be possible to ensure the correct care is accessible to individuals who need it during public health emergencies.

An Overview of Policy Issues and Legal/Court Cases

The existing laws and policies may fail to adequately address the needs of diverse populations during public health emergencies. In most cases, when such emergencies happen, they often highlight legal challenges and policy gaps related to care for culturally diverse populations. Arguably, DNPs and NPs should know and understand relevant health policies and legal precedents that they would apply in their practice. In particular, they should be aware of policies and laws related to emergency response and the use of technologies during emergencies. Also, the knowledge of their scope of practice is necessary to ensure care delivery within the law. Legal considerations about informed consent, confidentiality, cultural competence, autonomy, and others are critical and could inform the response to public health emergencies by NPs and DNPs.

Integration to Improve Care quality and accessibility

Better policies and regulations are necessary to support the roles of NPs and DNPs in responding to public health emergencies. For instance, it would be important to have laws that allow full practice authority to improve the extent to which nursing professionals will respond to public health emergencies. Significantly, NPs and DNPs should understand the legal implications related to vaccination mandates, autonomy, mandatory reporting, and patient confidentiality. The knowledge of these elements would enable the nurse to deal with various legal situations when responding to public health emergencies.

Moreover, it would be important to advocate for culturally inclusive public health emergency preparedness policies and plans. These would guide nursing professionals on how they should react to ensure that culturally diverse populations get appropriate attention during emergencies. Also, nurses should advocate for policies that would ensure funding for language access services and cultural competency training. Such changes would help to ensure improved and inclusive response during emergencies. Also, better legal frameworks to protect the rights of culturally diverse populations during public health emergencies are necessary. They will ensure responders during these emergencies offer appropriate care accessible to people from different backgrounds.

An Overview of Ethical Implications

During public health emergencies, ethical considerations are important and may help to make appropriate decisions. Mostly, the decisions that healthcare professionals make in these emergencies may affect human rights and community safety. Therefore, ethical considerations would help to balance individual rights with community safety. Careful ethical considerations help to handle issues like informed consent, confidentiality, resource allocation, healthcare workers’ rights, and priority setting (Stellmach et al., 2018; World Health Organization, n.d.). Scarce resources available during emergencies would present ethical dilemmas on how to allocate them fairly and adequately.

How It Relates to Health Care

Ethical frameworks can guide professionals to make correct decisions during public health emergencies. It would be important for NPs and DNPs to strive for distributive justice and ensure that all people can access the services and support they require. It would be important to prioritize who receives the limited medical resources during emergencies (Mannelli, 2020). An effective ethical criterion would help appropriate decisions and ensure individuals people with potential for recovery and those with more needs are considered in allocating the available resources.

Integration to Improve the Care Quality and Accessibility

Nursing professionals should adhere to ethical principles to guide their actions. It would ensure that their actions are justifiable and transparent during public health emergencies. Ethical considerations will help foster trust and improve collaboration with community members. Effective ethical training programs and resources can enable healthcare professionals to make equitable and informed decisions. They would be able to provide better care to different populations and ensure that there is equitable service and resource distribution to meet the needs of all people.

How FNPs Can Take the Lead in Developing Future Practice

Family nurse practitioners (FNPs) have adequate training that ensures that they are better leaders in addressing some issues. FNPs help in health promotion and disease prevention useful during public health emergencies. FNPs can develop emergency preparedness plans and improve responses to emergencies.

Integrates to Improve Care Quality and Accessibility

Family nurse practitioners should participate in public health education and policy advocacy regarding various aspects of public health emergencies. In particular, FNPs should champion culturally inclusive public health policies that would ensure improved and equitable responses to these emergencies. It is also important for these professionals to work with community organizations and leaders to address various needs and issues. Thus, they should engage in community outreach programs during emergencies. Through their expertise and community connection, they can help address social determinants of health and decrease disparities in care delivery. It would ensure improved care access and quality for individuals from different backgrounds. Also, FNPs can research the best practices that could be used to deliver culturally sensitive care in public health emergencies.

Conclusion

During public health emergencies, NPs and DNPs have a central role. In particular, they should adopt approaches that will address social and cultural issues that may emerge. Also, they can help deal with policy and legal situations during emergencies. NPs and DNPs should also uphold ethical principles to help address various ethical issues. Their leadership can enhance care accessibility and quality for culturally diverse populations. However, some challenges could affect the abilities of NPs and DNPs to provide services. Restrictive practice regulations and reduced cultural competence training are some of the aspects that could affect their effectiveness. In the current case, the “take-home” message is that empowering DNPs and NPs through policy reforms, ethical support, and education can help them deal with social, ethical, and legal issues during public health emergencies. Eventually, it would ensure a better emergency response that would meet the needs of all people and populations.

References

Mannelli, C. (2020). Whose life to save? Scarce resources allocation in the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(6), 364-366. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-106227

Nair, L., & Adetayo, O. A. (2019). Cultural competence and ethnic diversity in healthcare. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery–Global Open, 7(5), e2219. DOI: 10.1097/GOX.0000000000002219

O’Brien, S., Federici, F., Cadwell, P., Marlowe, J., & Gerber, B. (2018). Language translation during disaster: A comparative analysis of five national approaches. International journal of disaster risk reduction, 31, 627-636. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10056024/1/Federici_IJDRR_Revised_05072018_Accepted(edited).pdf

Piller, I., Zhang, J., & Li, J. (2020). Linguistic diversity in a time of crisis: Language challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Multilingua, 39(5), 503-515. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/multi-2020-0136/html

Stellmach, D., Beshar, I., Bedford, J., Du Cros, P., & Stringer, B. (2018). Anthropology in public health emergencies: what is anthropology good for? BMJ global health, 3(2), e000534. https://gh.bmj.com/content/3/2/e000534

Vearrier, L., & Henderson, C. M. (2021). Utilitarian principlism as a framework for crisis healthcare ethics. In HEC forum (Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 45-60). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10730-020-09431-7.pdf

World Health Organization. (n.d.). Ethical issues in outbreaks and emergencies. https://www.who.int/teams/health-ethics-governance/emergencies-and-outbreaks