Creating PHN Opportunities: New Services - New Learning - New Educators

Healthy People, Healthy Homes, Healthy Communities, a community/public health nursing service-learning center at the University of Maryland has launched a PHN Service-Learning and Leadership Circle. Designed to combat the dearth of PHN positions in both public and private settings, the lack of strong PHN practice role models, and limitations in clinical learning opportunities at all levels of nursing education, the Circle comprises five arcs: (1) service learning experiences, (2) program development knowledge and skills building, (3) leadership development, (4) PHN employment in practice and/or education, and finally (5) the creation of new service learning opportunities. Public health nurses' unique knowledge serves as a foundation for understanding the communities they serve. Their clinical expertise in working with individuals and families, their systems thinking, and their abilities as strategists and collaborators demonstrate that public health nurses have the distinctive ability to interpret the importance of health and illness concepts in order to advocate for clients, families and populations to health planners and policy makers at all private and public levels of health care. Evidence-based PHN practice serves as the gateway to health improvement in many vulnerable populations. Despite such demonstrations of effectiveness, public policy and budget constraints have led to inadequate staffing of governmental public health agencies, social service agencies, school health programs, workplace health and safety efforts, and many other PHN settings. It is anticipated that the PHN Service-Learning and Leadership Circle can help in reversing this trend. Progress has been made in all five of its arcs, as reflected in new positions created for r graduating advanced public health nurses, new agency and community partnerships with the School of Nursing; increased graduate program applications and enrollment, new and highly qualified PHN educators-practitioners-researchers joining the faculty, and innovative initiatives, programs and services underway.