Reflection on PUB610

Running head: REFLECTION
REFLECTION
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

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REFLECTION
Before beginning my personal reflection on PUB610, I would like to highlight few things
about academic career. I completed by bachelors in nursing from India and then joined the
Australian Catholic University for my masters. The specialization that I selected was public
health. Though I was well-aware about the term “public health” as I completed my bachelor in
nursing under the community health settings, during studying in this course I gradually came into
an understanding that my initial knowledge was extremely limited and this unit helped me to
gain a detailed understanding about the concept of public health at large.
Under the history and the principles of the public health, I learnt that effective application
of public health is guided by numerous ethical principles and guidelines. The main ethical
guidelines include respecting the rights of the service users via ensuring autonomy while
promoting community empowerment. I came across these ethical guidelines of public health
during my bachelor degree, but further reading helped me to clarify the understanding further.
Unit helped me in understanding that there are 10 different scope of practice in public health and
these are monitoring, diagnosis and investigation, informing and educating and empowering
people, mobilizing the community health partnerships, development of polices. The scope is also
guided by the enforcement of the law, linking to care, assurance of the competent workforce and
subsequent evaluation of the interventions given. Going forward I will mainly stress on
“assurance of competent workforce”. Miraglia and Asselin (2015) stated that a competent
nursing professional who gives provision for the continuous professional development is more
likely to indulge in community health partnership in an effective way and thereby helping to
monitor and diagnose the disease at large and promoting community empowerment. This
approach will help me to align with the area two of the public health standards, “Disease
Prevention and Control” (Council of Academic Public Health Institutions Australia (CAPHIA),

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(2016). In my professional career I will always keep scope of the professional development and
thus helping me to increase my level of competency in public health nursing.
Evidence based public health is another something new that I got an opportunity to learn
in this. I understood the reason and the importance of the implementation of the evidence-based
strategy in the public health. Evidence-based approach in public health mainly deals with
collection of evidences under active participation of the multidisciplinary team and thereby
helping to implement the best suited plan for the health promotion of the mass (Khoury,
Iademarco & Riley, 2016). Evidence-based approach also increase the provision of the person-
centred care plan and this customised care plan is designed based on the clinical needs of the
public health users (Yardley, Morrison, Bradbury & Muller, 2015). During my bachelors in
nursing degree in India had an understanding that the primary studies are rich sources of
resources in comparison to the secondary studies. However, the unit of the evidence-based
practice helped me to understand that there is a separate hierarchy pyramid known as hierarchy
of evidences. The systematic review of the randomized control trial, which is secondary study
holds the first position (level 1) in the pyramid and thus is regarded as one of a rich source of
citing an evidence-based practice (Djulbegovic & Guyatt, 2017). In my professional career, my
practice goal will be indulge in an effective disease prevention strategy and this falls under the
competency standard 3 of public health professionals in Australia (CAPHIA, 2016). I will
mainly focus on the community based health interventions strategies as this unit outline helped
me to understand that improving the community health is the first step towards securing the
public health. I will mainly focus on the usage of the evidence-based medicines and evidence-
based interventions in order to improve the health of the community dwelling population.