The Collaborative Roles of Nurses and General Practitioners in Advancing Preventive Healthcare: Vaccination Campaigns, Health Screenings, and Lifestyle Interventions
Abstract
Preventive health care is crucial to addressing the global burden related to disease, and includes vaccination campaigns, health screenings, and lifestyle modifications. Nurses have a leadership role in preventive care alongside General Practitioners (GPs) in a collaborative partnership where nurses augment community engagement, patient education, and care coordination, while GPs have clinical authority for the definition of the diagnosis, treatment planning and adherence, policy implementation, and broader population health initiatives. This review intends to assess the shared role of nurses and GPs to enhance access, equity, and efficacy in preventative care through a collective approach. Nurses have a leading role in vaccinations and combating vaccine hesitancy, while GPs provide clinical supervision on processes and policies for vaccination programming. Health screenings begin with a nurse taking the patient's history and risk factors, while GPs use their role in standard practice, providing clinical assessment and diagnoses that could lead to laboratory services improving early detection and intervention rates. Lifestyle interventions involve nurses using their educational background to advise patients on behavioural modification, while GPs have the authority to prescribe. Teams of nurses and GPs together can lessen the impact of chronic disease risk factors in our patient populations. Interprofessional approaches, such as team-based care and shared decision-making, have resulted in enhanced preventive health outcomes, with studies indicating up to 25% improvement rates in vaccination coverage and up to 30% improved screening detection rates. The challenges of regulation, fragmentation, and resource limitations indicate that prevention system reform policies from the federal to the regional or local level, such as providing nurses full practice authority and a standard electronic health platform, will be necessary in the future. Tables reporting the strategies and outcomes highlight the role of integrated care models in advancing the system of public health.
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Authors
Copyright (c) 2024 Esam Rizgallah Omar Megdad, ALanoud Awda Albalawi, Saud Sahal Matar Alotaibi, Salman Ahmed Awaji, Rawan hussain ahmed makki, Salha Eissa Shami, Abdulghafur Abdu A Arishi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.