Nursing Essay: Infectious Disease Trends

Infectious Disease Trends
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Infectious Disease Trends
Definitions
Epidemiology is any scientific, systematic, and data-driven study investigating the frequency, causes, and determinants of health-related issues. On the other hand, an outbreak is a sudden increase in the frequency of a disease's occurrence in a specific place of time. Another related term is incidence which refers to a probability measurement of a health-related issue in a given population and time. Prevalence is an identified portion of a population found to be infected by a medical condition.
Role of nursing within epidemiology
Epidemiology can be considered an important tool that influences healthcare policies' formation and implementation from a national, regional, and local capacity. Therefore, it is in the best interest for nurses to play an active part in planning, forming, and implementing needed healthcare policies. This form of preventive healthcare significantly impacts the nursing practice and the quality of patient care directly. Nursing can also help counter traditional notions and beliefs that epidemiology works to distance health practitioners from their patients (D, 2000). This is far from the truth as it demonstrated that nurses and clients could be actively involved in the healthcare process.
For instance, the recent major outbreak is the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that has brought unprecedented negative consequences globally. Global health, economies, and contains human resources are the main effects of contagious disease. In late December 2019, the infection outbreak started with the disease characterized by mysterious pneumonia symptoms such as fever, dry cough, fatigue, and occasional gastrointestinal (Hopewell, Reichman, & Castro, 2021). Since the COVID 19 outbreak, there have been two more current infections; Small Turtles - Salmonella Infections and Queso Fresco – Listeria Infections. The Small Turtles - Salmonella Infections, in particular, are attributed to pet turtles that carry the Salmonella germs in their droppings. Despite looking healthy and clean, the droppings host the germs that travel easily in any place they can roam. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevent Advices pet owners to observe hygiene and look out for fever, diarrhea, and excessive vomiting. The symptoms, especially fever, can increase the chances of misdiagnosis through its association with COVID 19. Consequently, nurses can use their epidemiology expertise to help themselves and the public identify and update symptoms of recent outbreaks.
Necessary authorities need to improve IPC education and training to get the best out of nurses practicing epidemiology. For instance, IPC education should revolve around every aspect of healthcare and is relevant to healthcare workers and patients. This policy should be available for every healthcare personnel through team- and task-based strategies that are participatory CITATION Jul17 \l 1033 (Storr, et al., 2017). Consequently, nurses can simulate training of situations to reduce the risks of hospital-acquired infections or antimicrobial resistance. Also, the severity of covid 19 infections showed high prevalence in some countries like the United States and Italy at some point. Consequently, in such an extensive scale population infection, nurses can use communication strategies and health information technology to promote quality healthcare outcomes.
Evaluating current infectious diseases locally, statewide, and nationally
Before 2020, there have many infectious diseases which flare up from time to time locally, in the state, and nationally. Most of them are contained by vaccination and monitoring processes that have helped the community maintain healthy herd immunity and prevent the spread of the disease. One of the infectious diseases that have been reported around the country is Measles, Cholera, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, Herpes, and COVID-19.
In 2019, a highly contagious respiratory disease jumped from animal...