Public Health Tool – Health Impact Checklist
There are numerous tools used in public health nursing. The most commonly used and effective for healthcare functions is the impact checklist. The tool is a simple approach that suggests answers to essential questions focused on evaluating the potential health impacts of a particular health decision. In a combination of checkboxes and responses connected with the potential changes, the impact checklist directs a researcher to establish the possible impacts of a particular decision included in the healthcare plan. The tool helps create practical recommendations in maximizing the potential health impacts and mitigating the negative practical recommendations (Lin & Beckman, 2020). Apart from the entire template, the checklist summary enables the researcher to develop high-level and snapshot findings that enable a fine-tuned decision-making process. The tool’s effectiveness is that it provides several answers that direct the researcher to the main impacts of an action related to healthcare. The structure of the questions and answers rely on evidence, research, and observations from experienced experts concerning the health issue and thus can be highly relied on to establish the relationship between the community questions and the expected outcomes (Hollander et al., 2018). An example of the use of an impact checklist is on the control of tuberculosis. The first question can be on the adherence to the medications, and if the patient answers yes, the next question would be on the possible side effects of the medications. If the response to the second question is yes, another question may follow to establish whether the patient takes the medication with food. Through these subsequent questions, the public health nurses find out the misses in the care plan and thus come up with quality decisions for the patients and the general population.
References
Hollander, M., Martin, S. L., & Vehige, T. (2018). The surveys are in! The role of local government in supporting active community design. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 14(3), 228-237. https://journals.lww.com/jphmp/Fulltext/2008/05000/The_Surveys_Are_In__The_Role_of_Local_Government.6.aspx
Lin, T., & Beckman, W. (2020). HI-C: Health Impact Checklist. Kansas Health Institute. https://www.khi.org/policy/article/HI-C
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