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Public Health Nurses are Disease Detectives

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

Public health nurses played a crucial role in the initial identification of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak that has almost 1300 confirmed cases.

According to an article written by Barbara Kirchheimer and published on Nurse.com, a website that provides news and information to people involved in the healthcare industry:

Kimberlae Houk, RN, MSN, a captain with the U.S. Public Health Service and a public health nurse with the Indian Health Service at Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock, N.M., was in the thick of it at the beginning of the investigation. The quick response of her team of public health nurses and of her state's epidemiologists in May helped form the basis of the national investigation that continues today.

Houk and her team formed a solid foundation for collecting information about the outbreak that would have otherwise remained inaccessible:

Because the region is extremely rural and some patients lacked telephones, the New Mexico nurses in some cases visited the homes of those who had become ill, often driving more than an hour to do so. Because some patients were on the Navajo reservation and some were off the reservation, Indian Health Service nurses worked closely with their counterparts in the state health department.

The nurses asked those who had become ill a battery of questions from a 20-page survey known as a "shotgun" questionnaire that explores potential sources of disease, from animal contact to sources of drinking water to attendance at various locations that could be contaminated. The nurses went through what each person had eaten during the week before the illness struck to attempt to identify what caused the outbreak, sometimes trying to jog memories by opening refrigerators or going through pantry shelves, Houk says. The goal was to find a common element, whether it was a food item or some kind of contact or common location.

Nurses are capable of providing a unique link between those sickened and those looking to collect information. According to Patricia Frank, RN, MSN, a regional infectious disease nurse epidemiologist with the state of New Mexico who also worked on the Salmonella outbreak, “Nurses are often able to get information from patients that others might not be able to because patients tend to trust them.”

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on July 28, 2008 (boomark / email).