Practice Reflection: Public Health Law & Policy (PUBH632) - University

This report is a practice reflection on public health law and policy, focusing on its relevance to nursing practice and future career development. The author explores the impact of public health laws, such as the Public Health Act 2008 and 2010, on their nursing practice, particularly in areas like infectious diseases, mental health, and substance abuse. The reflection highlights how these laws enhance decision-making skills for legal interventions and promote collaborative practices. The paper also discusses the alignment of public health laws with nursing competency standards, including health monitoring, surveillance, disease prevention, health protection, health promotion, and health policy. The author emphasizes how these laws enhance their ability to interpret epidemiological data, assess public health risks, and advocate for population health issues. The conclusion underscores the importance of public health legislation in strengthening nursing skills and contributing to the reduction of public health issues.

Running head : PUBLIC HEALTH LAW AND POLICY
Public health law and policy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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PUBLIC HEALTH LAW AND POLICY
Introduction:
Although legal interventional is responsible for many sentinel public health
achievements, the law is underutilized as a prime tool for enhancing the population health. many
of the greatest public health achievements in Australia are the result of interventions with the
assistance of accurate law (Moorhead et al., 2017). Even for controlling chronic and infectious
disease, the public health laws have exerted a powerful effect in legalizing the effective
interventions for environmental and behavioral health risk (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2015). This
essay will argue how public health laws are related to the nursing practice and future scopes of it.
Therefore, this paper will reflect on the public health laws related to my nursing practice and
future career and practice according to nursing competency standard in following paragraphs.
Discussion:
Lack of sufficient, high-quality health workers is one of the primer barriers to improving
population health. The prime reason behind it is that a majority of the workers is lacking the
sound knowledge and public health act is important to solve the prevalence of chronic disease
(Zwanikken et al., 2014). Therefore, the challenges of promoting public health can be solved if
every domain of health professional, especially nurses involves themselves in collaborative
practices. These laws also include child hygiene, communicable disease, and tuberculosis. As
nursing student, these public health laws and regulations enhanced my area of practices for legal
interventions in order to improve public health (Sellers et al., 2015). My specialty practice area is
mostly associated with the legislative practice of public health law 2010 and public health act
2008. The peculiar features of these jurisdictions facilitate my nursing skills of general public
health powers such as infectious diseases, mental health, substance abuse, and statutory nuisance

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and how to apply legal intervention to improve population health. The public health legislation is
concerned with certain public health issues such as sanitary conditions. Therefore, the law
increases the awareness as a nurse for ensuring sanitary conditions in urban areas and appoints
the sanitary inspector who will monitor the quality of food and water for the safe public health.
As a bachelor student of nursing public health act 2005 help nurses for preventing and reducing
the risk of public health, protecting children who were at risk of harm when present at health
service facilities, restricting the performance of the cosmetic procedure on children (Zwanikken
et al., 2014).. The public health act 2008 and principles enhanced my specialty area by enhancing
the decision-making skills for legal interventions (Brownson et al., 2017). Moreover, this public
health legislation helped me to involve myself in collaborative practice and provide me sound
knowledge about assessing the public health risk for reducing it, which will further enhance my
nursing skills in the clinical field.
Underpinning the competency standard of nursing practices, these public health laws are
effective in enhancing my specialty area of practices. The first standard of public health graduate
competency highlighted the importance of health monitoring and surveillance in nursing
(Morgan & Hughes, 2016). therefore, as a nurse, public health legislation assist me to interpret
the epidemiological measures of occurrence associated disease. it will assist me to interpret the
research findings relevant to the population health and addressing the determinants of significant
population health problems, especially for aboriginal individuals of Australia in order to come up
with superior legal interventions. the second competency standard highlighted the importance of
analysis of the quality of findings from a surveillance program (Stupans et al., 2016). Hence, it
will assist me to interpret the communication surveillance findings from the identified
populations, evaluate population-based surveillance system and outline community strategy. The

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third competence standard focused on disease prevention and control. Therefore, this will assist
me to identify the key the key elements of a prevention strategy and explain how legal
framework, service delivery system influences the prevention of disease. The fourth standard
emphasizes the essentiality of health protection and this will help me to be aware of the
interventions that will promote safe public health (Morgan & Hughes, 2016). The fifth
competency standard focused on the importance of health promotion and it will help me to
enhance my future practices for promoting safe public health. The sixth nursing competency
highlighted the involvement of health policy, planning, and management (Hughe, Begley &
Yeatman, 2015). This will assist me to develop an advocacy strategy regarding a population
health issue to influence public policy. The last standard of competency highlighted the
importance of Evidence-based Professional Population Health Practice (Hughe, Begley &
Yeatman, 2015). Therefore, this will enhance my systematic and ethical approach for reducing
public health issues and assessing peer reviews, evidence-based information relevant to the study
of population health.
Conclusion:
Thus, it can be concluded that public health legislation is essential for nursing practices in
order to strengthen nursing skills. There are certainly public health laws that enhanced my course
of practice in nursing and improved awareness. The nursing competency stand will assist me to
enhance my skills and assist me to come up with the interventions for reducing public health
issues.

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references :
Brownson, R. C., Baker, E. A., Deshpande, A. D., & Gillespie, K. N. (2017). Evidence-based
public health. Oxford university press.
Hughes, R., Begley, A., & Yeatman, H. (2015). Aspirational competency expectations for public
health nutritionists in A ustralia: A consensus study. Nutrition & dietetics, 72(2), 122-
131.
Moorhead, S., Johnson, M., Maas, M. L., & Swanson, E. (2018). Nursing Outcomes
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Sciences.
Morgan, K., & Hughes, R. (2016). Research and Evaluation Competency Expectations for Allied
Health Graduates in Australia A Delphi Study Among Allied Health Academics. Journal
of allied health, 45(3), 183-190.
Sellers, K., Leider, J. P., Harper, E., Castrucci, B. C., Bharthapudi, K., Liss-Levinson, R., ... &
Hunter, E. L. (2015). The Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey: the first
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Stupans, I., Atkinson, J., Meštrović, A., Nash, R., & Rouse, M. J. (2016). A shared focus:
comparing the Australian, Canadian, United Kingdom and United States pharmacy

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& Tahir, H. (2014). Validation of public health competencies and impact variables for
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