DNP Project: Homeless Epidemic in California & Nursing Care

This essay explores the critical issue of homelessness in California and the essential role nurses play in providing healthcare to this vulnerable population. The essay highlights the challenges faced by the homeless, including lack of access to medical care and the prevalence of physical and mental health problems. Nurses address these challenges through mobile clinics, offering services such as free medical checkups, breast and testicular cancer screenings, and hypertension management. The essay emphasizes the importance of early detection of cancer, self-examination techniques, and strategies for managing blood pressure and stress. It also discusses the significance of comprehensive head-to-toe assessments in understanding the overall health condition of homeless individuals. The essay provides a detailed overview of nursing interventions and demonstrates how nurses can significantly improve the health outcomes of the homeless population in California.

Running head: HOMELESS POPULATION AND A NURSES ROLE TO CARE 1
Homeless Epidemic in California a Nurses Role to Care
Name
Institution

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Homeless Epidemic in California and Nurses Role to Care
Homeless is a situation of living in housing that lacks legal protection and is below the
minimum standard. Homeless can be characterized into primary homeless where individuals stay
on streets, secondary homeless where individuals get emergency accommodation from family
members and friends temporarily, and tertiary homeless where one lives in hostel or boarding
houses which have a public washroom. California has the highest number of the homeless
population in the country. Since the 1940s, the population in California has grown so much while
home ownership is at its lowest rate. Low-income citizens have dealt with serious consequences
of lack of housing, high pressure from homebuyers and affluent renters, which led to a high rate
of homelessness (Smith, 2018). Homeless population experience physical and mental health
problems but are unable to develop a treatment plan and keep the supply of medication while
living on the streets. Nurses around California engage in a mobile clinic to provide free medical
checkup to the community through an outreach visit (Cross, 2006). This essay reflects the
homeless epidemic in California and nurses role to care.
By the use of mobile clinics which offer free medical service to the homeless
communities, nurses can offer free breast and testicular cancer screening to the homeless people
in California for early detection, which is crucial. Testicles are part of a man's sex organs called
scrotum, they are hormone testosterone and produce sperm. In California, most women who are
over the age of forty suffer and die from breast cancer and men between the age of fifteen and
thirty-five suffer from testicular cancer since they face barriers from receiving the right medical
services. Most breast and testicular cancers can be found at an early stage when they are small
and have not spread. Most of the time a lump in the breast or on a testicle is the first symptoms
of cancer. Nurses find a way to reach out to the homeless people, create awareness and educate

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them on symptoms, the importance of breast and testicular cancer screening and on self-
examination at home. Nurses can provide free mammography screening to women and
assessment that may be needed to investigate an abnormal result. Mammogram screening of
breast is a low dose x-ray used to detect cancer at an early stage before symptoms appear. If an
abnormal result is found the nurses will advise the patient on the need for further investigation
for the results and more tests and clinical examination free. Men are always advised to do self-
exams at least monthly. One should become familiar with their testicles thus making it easier to
notice any changes they should see a doctor immediately. The best time to do the testicular self-
exam is after having a warm bath or shower because the warmth relaxes the scrotum making the
exam easier. ("Testicular Self-Exam", 2018)
Nurses help the homeless epidemic population living with blood pressure in California by
modifying treatment for them making follow-ups and continued care to achieve treatment,
assisting them to reduce and achieve goals for attaining a healthy blood pressure free of charge.
Nurses can go around the community creating awareness of the need to assess, treat and control
the blood pressure. ("Hypertension: creating awareness and strategies to control it",
2003).Homeless communities tend to undergo stress and a lot of anger which may cause
hypertension if it persists for a longer time. Nurses give them tips on stress management and how
to manage their time. Hypertension is also connected with being overweight and poor nutrition,
nurses emphasize to them on how to achieve and maintain the ideal body weight and on eating
healthy foods even in the condition. Nurses motivate them to assess and manage their blood
pressure. Monitoring blood pressure at home is very important and can help monitor blood
pressure in a familiar setting and make sure the medication is working. Self-monitoring

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encourages self-control and gives a patient a stronger sense of responsibility, can also decrease
the frequent visits to the doctor for checkups and treatment. (Elliott, 2012).
Nurses can conduct a comprehensive head to toe examination, which involves all systems
of the body, and the outcomes will update them of the overall condition of the patient in the
homeless population. A focused assessment of the affected body system should be followed up.
An assessment can be done by a complete health assessment where an examination is conducted
in detail and typically includes a comprehensive head to toe exam and health history. A problem-
focused assessment is an assessment based on certain goals like nurses from different department
have different populations and nursing care goals. (Lee, 2018)

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References
Cross, J. (2006). MEDLINE, PubMed, PubMed Central, and the NLM. Editors' Bulletin, 2(1), 1-
5. doi: 10.1080/17521740701702115.
Elliott, W. (2012). Relative effectiveness of clinic and home blood pressure monitoring
compared with ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in diagnosis of hypertension:
systematic review. Yearbook of Medicine, 2012, 338-340. doi: 10.1016/s0084-
3873(12)00261-1.
Hypertension: creating awareness and strategies to control it. (2003). Retrieved from
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/files/docs/guidelines/express.pdf.
Lee, N. (2018). How to Conduct Head to Toe Assessment. Retrieved from
https://nurse.org/articles/how-to-conduct-head-to-toe-assessment/ Mar 19, 2018.
Smith, N. (2018). nregister.com -the &nbspThis website is for sale! -&nbspnregister Resources
and Information. Retrieved from http://www.nregister.com/search/results?q=Nicholas W.
Smith.
Testicular Self-Exam. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.testicularcancersociety.org/testicular-
self-exam.html.