Question

How important is personal model in the PHN cycle? Which component in the PHN will
suffer if you don’t have good personal model? Why?

Answer 1

Public health nursing is an interpersonal caring process which delivers care for the unique needs of the individuals,families and communities. The role of a public health nurse is crucial. The public health nurse identifies the health needs and inequalities,raises issues on health and social well being and uses means to encourage positive health behavior to improve health. The environment of the public health nurse keeps on changing, and she must be able to respond, adapt to the new emerging needs of the individuals.

The personal model of care in public health nursing aims at providing care to the individual needs of community and providing services accordingly. Based on the personal model, the public health nurse estimates the current health state of each individual and measures the degree of severity of disease. The public health nurse then provides actionable health information that can help to avoid adjacent disease and giude people to achieve desired health status. She also tracks the peoples reaction,measures the changes in their health and estimates their current health state again.

It is clear that the personal model helps a public health nurse to identify the needs of the society, helps to take necessary actions and also to evaluate the effectiveness of the action. If the personal model is not good, this individualized care will be affected. The quality of care and the integration of primary, seconary and tertiary care will suffer as the foundation of all of these components is early recognition of diseases, primary care induction and encouraging positive health behaviors at individual level.