International Journal of Research Studies in Psychology
CollabWritive Special Issue
2023 Volume 9 Issue 1
Available Online: 31 December 2023
Author/s:
Badillo, Janel
Graduate School, Lyceum of the Philippines University – Batangas, Philippines (badillojanelrn@gmail.com)
Abstract:
Public Health Nurses dedicate their time, passion, and services to help improve the health of an entire population over time. They are also considered to be the heart of the healthcare system and considered to be one of the most important human resources in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The main objective of this study was to determine the expanded role of Public Health Nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic with the use of a 4-point Likert Scale and a set of questions and factors prepared by the researcher. This was distributed to the public health nurses chosen in this study. The researcher also identified the issues, challenges, and level of competencies of the respondents. A purposive random sampling of public health nurses from selected localities of Batangas Province including nurses under the Nurse Deployment Program of the Department of Health were the participants of the study. The researcher was able to gather 180 nurses as the respondents of this study. On the other hand, the weighted arithmetic mean was used to determine the importance of each item in the questionnaire and their respective descriptive ratings. Lastly, Cronbach’s Alpha was used for computing and analyzing the results and to also assess the reliability and feasibility of the questionnaire. Public health nurses positively identified that they experienced the different issues from social stigma due to lack of knowledge to support their clients and less support in the preparation and resources. There was no significant difference between the cognitive and psychomotor levels of competencies of the nurses when grouped with the issues and challenges that they experienced. However, the issues and challenges had a significant relationship with the level of competency of the nurses in terms of affective which implied that the nurses were more competent when faced with more challenges and issues. The proposed framework that shows the skill enhancement should be adopted by the community or public practicing nurses to set the direction of competency enhancement as part of their expanded role in the performance of Public Health Nursing. A program for the sustainable mental and psychological well-being of nurses should be prioritized through strategic analysis of the situation to further safeguard the interest of the nurses.
Keywords: public health nurse, nurse competencies, issues and challenges, COVID-19 pandemic, performance
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsp.2023.2006
Cite this article:
Badillo, J. (2023). Expanded role of public health nurses during COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Research Studies in Psychology, 9(1), 89-102. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsp.2023.2006