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Pediatric Environmental Home Assessment: Tools for Public Health and Visiting Nurses
Why a Pediatric Environmental Home Assessment? Public health nurses and visiting nurses often visit a client's home to help them resolve a particular illness. Since many illnesses are linked to environmental hazards in the home, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) believes nurses can provide better care and support if the nurse identifies those hazards and takes action to reduce the health threats. Usually this action involves educating the family. Often it involves connecting the family to additional resources that may be available in their community.
To assist nurses (and others who do home visits), NCHH has developed two forms to make it easier to identify potential hazards and the actions needed to address those hazards. They are the PEHA Survey Form and the PEHA Nursing Care Plan. We have tried to keep the forms relatively short and focused on the most significant pediatric environmental health threats.
We see these forms as a starting point for you. We designed them to give you the basic hazards and a structure to build upon. We encourage you to tailor them to your area, your rules, and your client's needs. We would appreciate your feedback on the forms and ways to improve them. We would also appreciate getting a copy of your changes so we can learn about local enhancements. Please send your comments and revisions to Susan Aceti at saceti@nchh.org.
Using the PEHA Survey and Nursing Care Plan
The PEHA Survey is a three-page form you use to collect information about the resident and the home. It consists of six sections described below. Potential problems are highlighted in bold typeface. You can open up a blank form or a sample completed form. We have on-line training available to help you understand how to effectively use the form. These are the categories covered by the Survey:
The PEHA Nursing Care Plan is seven-page form to help you effectively respond to problems identified in the survey. The PEHA Nursing Care Plan serves as a checklist for you when you identify a potential problem on the PEHA Survey. For every potential problem (identified in bold typeface) on the PEHA Survey, you will find recommended action steps on the PEHA Nursing Care Plan. You can open up a blank form or a sample completed form. We have on-line training available to help you understand how to effectively use the form. The PEHA Nursing Care Plan consists of three columns
The PEHA Nursing Care Plan has the same sections as the Survey.
We hope you find the forms useful. Click here to begin the on-line PEHA Training
As a complement to these forms, we also encourage you to learn about the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation's Pediatric Environmental History Initiative.
Thanks to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for their funding and guidance for this project in support of public health nurse training. |
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