Healthy Homes for Public Health Nurses & Visiting Nurses

Thanks to a grant from EPA's Office of Children's Health, NCHH is pleased to offer a free, on-line training for nurses to help them assess hazards in a home and develop a Nursing Action Plan based on that assessment. Taking the Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course is helpful. However, it is not a prerequisite for taking the on-line training.

Public health and visiting nurses are key people in making homes healthier. Not only are nurses firmly grounded in the medical aspects of diseases and their client's condition, but they have an ongoing relationship with their clients that allows them to spot trends and identify special problems. Visiting nurses and many public health nurses have the added advantage of seeing clients in their homes.

Where there is an active program to rehabilitate homes to make them healthier, program managers have shared stories about public health nurses with NCHH. They often identify a public health nurse as the crucial person in the success of their program. Residents call on a public health nurse when they have questions about construction or concerns with contractors. Nurses have the credibility to resolve problems with contractors, landlords, and residents.

Nurses also add value to the Training Center's Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course. They bring a perspective and urgency that makes the class a success. They help their peers in the housing profession in the course understand the dramatic impact of asthma or lead poisoning on a family. The Training Center has been fortunate that 20% of the participants in the Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course from December 2005 to September 2006 are nurses.

In the Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course, trainers routinely see nurses having an "ah ha" moment as they realize how specific housing problems have impacted their clients. Nurses leave with a firm grasp of the connection between client health problems and environmental hazards in the home. They see how root causes such as moisture, pests, poor ventilation, contaminants and cleanliness can be managed. They also learn how to take steps beyond simple client education to make effective referrals to code inspectors, convince a landlord to make improvements, or demonstrate how a client can take action.

In the Training Center's post-training survey of participants, nurses routinely identified significant impacts of the course on their practice. Click here to learn what they said.

This activity has been submitted to the Ohio Nurses Association(OBN-001-91) for approval to award contact hours. The Ohio Nurses Association is accredited as an approver of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

Please call Judith Akoto at 443-539-4167 for more information about contact hours.