Population‐Based Public Health Nursing Interventions: A Model from Practice

Abstract

In a changing and complex health care system, public health nurses face challenges to explain their work and contributions to health outcomes. In response to this need, the Minnesota Department of Health, Section of Public Health Nursing, initiated a process to describe public health nursing interventions. The Public Health Nursing Interventions (PHI) Model was developed through a collaborative process by public health nurses at the state and local levels. The purpose of the model was to define more clearly the practice of public health nursing and to describe better the work of public health nurses at the community and systems levels. The PHI model identifies 17 interventions and provides practice examples at the systems, community and individual/family levels. The model defines a broader view of the mission and scope of public health nursing. Practice examples are given for agency staff, administrators, educators, and policy makers.

Practice-Based Evidence in Public Health: Improving Reach, Relevance, and Results

“…For those designing effectiveness trials, the PRECIS tool offers useful principles, and the 2009 amendment to the CONSORT statement provides guidance for reporting results from pragmatic trials (81,94). The Intervention Wheel, developed by public health practitioners in Wisconsin, has been used in interventions spanning a wide range of public health topics (43,44). The School Health Action Planning and Evaluation System is a framework designed specifically for use in school settings and uses school-specific data to give feedback about physical activity and obesity trends among students (10).…”

Exploring Public Health Nursing at the Community and Systems Level

“…The Minnesota Public Health Intervention Wheel is a framework describing 17 public health interventions that nurses perform ranging from surveillance and screening to policy development. The interventions are divided into three levels: individual and family, community, and systems level to designate what level the intervention is being applied at in a public health situation (Olson Keller & Strohschein, 2011). When learning about the Intervention Wheel, students often struggle in understanding and applying the community and systems level interventions as much of what they initially encounter through clinical experiences is at the individual and family level.…”

“…Using the Minnesota Public Health Intervention Wheel (Keller, Strohschein, Lia-Hoagberg, & Schaffer, 1998) as a framework, a public health nursing day at the state health department was designed to expose students to the diverse roles in public health with a public health laboratory tour, nurse panel, and refl ection. The Minnesota Public Health Intervention Wheel is a framework describing 17 public health interventions that nurses perform ranging from surveillance and screening to policy development.…”

The nature of public health nursing practice: Finding coherence in complexity.

“…Others define the role of the public health nurse by focusing on the interventions carried out in practice (Keller, Strohschein, Lia-Hoagberg, & Schaffer, 1998). These interventions are described as advocacy, case management, coalition building, collaboration, disease investigation, health teaching, screening, surveillance and so on.…”

“…First, public health nursing practice is most commonly described in terms of its roles and functions (e.g. CPHA, 1990CPHA, , 1996aKeller et al, 1998). The second approach to describing the content of practice attempts to differentiate public health nursing practice from other kinds of nursing practice.…”