In the emergency department, I usually focus on community and population health most while I am discharging a patients. This involves providing them with instructions, tips, and resources, and other education to help them stay healthy or get healthy. 

E1.  My previous definition still applies, but perhaps is more refined now. Community health is very important. If the community itself is unhealthy then the hospitals and ERs will be fuller and more overloaded with sick people. I would emphasize the importance of community health more in my definition thanks to C229. As an emergency room nurse, it is partly my responsibility to aid the community with their health by giving good discharge instructions. If people are more educated on how to stay healthy, then the community will be healthier as a whole.

E1a.  C229 helped develop my definition further by showing me just how unhealthy my community is, and how important it is for a community to be healthy. This course opened my eyes to the lack of education on resources available to the citizens of DFW.

E1b.  C229 task 1

E1b1.  C229 task 1 supports my paper for the reasons I have previously already stated. This project really made me get out in to my community and learn just how many resources there are. It helped to define my definition by enforcing the importance of community health and opening my eyes to how unhealthy my community is. The C229 task 1 paper supports my definition by going through the evidence of the problem with research and statistics, and also helped define contributing factors.

E2a.  I learned that my community is really overweight. I also learned that they are undereducated about available resources. I also learned that there are resources for people across the lifespan, and for all levels of income. I learned where many of my community resources are and who to contact in the future. I learned how to better educate my patients on the prevention of obesity.

E2b.  Everything mentioned in E2a is what I learned. This all contributed to my nursing diagnosis statement for the obvious reasons like my community being overweight and not realizing how many resources there are to prevent obesity. My nursing diagnosis statement was “Increased risk of obesity among the people of DFW related to poor diet and lack of exercise as demonstrated by higher BMI averages in the area.”

E2c.  My initial nursing diagnosis statement did not evolve that much after being involved with my community. The problem was still increased risk of obesity. It was still related to poor diet and lack of exercise. All of this was still demonstrated by higher BMI rates in the area.  There are plenty of resources, people just aren’t using them. If any evolution occurred at all, it would be that I now have a better understanding of the lack of education the community has about the resources available to them.

E3.  The AMNH certificate will help my future as a professional nurse by making me more aware of genetic problems with my patients. Certain genetics can determine the effectiveness of medications, how a person responds to certain diseases, and what they are at risk for developing in the future. This will help me to better care for my patients at the professional nursing level.