The American Travel Health Nurses Association (ATHNA) and the American Nurses Association (ANA) both are national professional associations. This joint ATHNA and ANA publication—Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice pdf free —reflects ATHNA’s position regarding the specialty practice of travel health nursing and should be reviewed in conjunction with the state board of nursing regulations. Should. State law regulations govern the practice of nursing, while Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice guide travel health registered nurses in the application of their professional skills and responsibilities.
Scope and Standards of Travel Health Nursing
The American Travel Health Nurses Association (ATHNA) is the exclusive nursing organization for travel health nurses in the United States. ATHNA establishes, maintains, and promotes standards of professional travel health nursing practice.
Travel health nursing is a specialized nursing practice that promotes the well-being of all travelers at all stages/phases of travel and in all settings. This feature focuses on passenger health and safety through continuous monitoring and evaluation of multiple health factors with the intention of promoting health and wellness. and prevents disease, disability, and premature death.
Travel health nursing draws on knowledge from nursing, pharmacology, epidemiology, tropical medicine, primary care, and behavioral psychology to ensure the health and safety of travelers and the communities they impact. Travel health nursing professionals represent specially educated and trained registered nurses, registered nurses in advanced practice, and travel health nurses prepared at the graduate level to assess patients, and analyze subjective and objective travel-related data, Nursing professionals use process skills to teach patients. About health risks and safety concerns related to travel, as well as health promotion and disease prevention education.
The practices of this specialty are evidence-based and consistent with professional and ethical standards. Travel health nurses practice within the scope of their state nurse practice acts and specialty standards. They serve as direct care providers and advisors to businesses, organizations, and the traveling public. Travel health nurses are researchers, faculty members, and nursing leaders. Many are entrepreneurs, serving as owners and operators of their own travel health centers.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) document, Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 3rd Edition (ANA, 2015b) define professional nursing practice in the United States. This is the basis of ATHNA’s and ANA’s publication, Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 1st Edition, (2021), which describes the specialty of travel health nursing.
This scope of practice statement provides a comprehensive description of travel health nursing: the what, when, where, who, how, and why of the specialty practice. The standards guide the practice of travel health nurses and the quality nursing care of travelers. The standards serve to maintain the safe and competent clinical and administrative practice as the roles and responsibilities of travel health nursing evolve. Travel health nursing is a dynamic and evolving specialty, and this publication updates ATHNA’s Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice II (self-published 2014). It includes a broad scope of practice statement and 17 standards with competencies for the professional practice of travel health nursing in an increasingly “complex global healthcare environment” (Hill 2016).
The travel health nursing standards are intentionally general and broad to include the growing responsibilities of travel health nurses. Accompanying competencies describe how the standards apply to general travel health nursing practice and, therefore, can be modified for specific travel health nursing populations or settings.
Key Features of Travel Health Nursing 1st edition PDF
- Provide factual information for travel health nurses, other health professionals, and the public on what constitutes travel health nursing practice provided by RNs, Advanced Practice RNs, and Travel Health Nurse Prepared at the graduate level.
- Promote and guide the provision of quality pre- and post-travel nursing care for individuals, families, and groups in a variety of outpatient settings (eg, policies, procedures, and competencies).
- Raise standards of practice and achieve greater uniformity in the provision of travel health nursing services to better protect travelers.
- Facilitate the development and dissemination of professional travel health nursing knowledge in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education (CE) settings.
- Serve as a resource for traveling health nurses and their employers for job descriptions, orientation manuals, continuing education, and career advancement.
- Facilitate the evaluation of professional travel health nursing performance, as evidenced by performance appraisals, peer reviews, and reflective practice.
History of Travel Health Nursing Standards
The First edition of this PDF book also briefs the History of Travel Health Nursing Standards. The concept that travel-specific health nursing standards were needed began sometime in the 1990s. Nurses in the United States had been instructed by employers to provide care to travelers for more than 10 years. Too often, however, nurses were asked to provide pre-trip services based solely on their experience administering allergy shots or routine immunizations; nurses rarely received specialized education or training to address the various health issues associated with travel. In fact, it was not uncommon for a nurse working in a corporate or university health setting to be expected to groom international travelers in a brief encounter that was simply added to the clinic schedule with little or no advance notice. Safety and security information for the destination was not routinely addressed.
The many needs of travelers beyond immunization services were rarely recognized. The need for nursing standards was also raised as a frequent topic of discussion whenever allied health nurses traveling across the country engaged in networking and professional development. Travel health nurses expressed valid concerns about inconsistencies in the delivery of nursing care before and after travel; they also raised questions about patient safety, undue influence from pharmaceutical representatives, potential conflicts of interest in for-profit settings, and a lack of travel health training opportunities.
Around the same time, travel health nurses at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in the UK began developing a set of competencies for travel health nurses in their country; they also saw the need for travelers to receive quality services that went beyond the delivery of vaccines. American nurses learned about the RCN initiative at international conferences and then established communications with directors of nursing that including Jane Chiodini and Sandra Grieves. In addition, the nurses learned about the travel health course offered by the Faculty of Travel Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
Subsequently, US travel health nurses learned of additional professional efforts in the Netherlands. In 2004, when ATHNA was incorporated, the initial goal was to document the scope and standards of travel health nursing. This effort was seen as a critical and necessary step both in defining the specialty and in helping to ensure safe and consistent pre- and post-trip nursing care for travelers.
That first self-published version was inspired by ANA Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, with additional attention given to the published work of travel health nurses in the UK and the Netherlands, and publications from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and the International Society for Travel Medicine (ISTM). Beginning in 2012, ATHNA initiated a task force to explore formal recognition of travel health nursing as a specialty.
To that end, in 2014, ATHNA revised Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice I (self-published in 2004), again using the model from ANA’s latest edition of scope and standards. The second edition of ATHNA’s Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, II (self-published in 2014) included competencies for each of the standards and descriptions of the various nursing professional roles. In 2017, ATHNA made ANA’s recognition of travel health nursing as an official nursing specialty its number one organizational priority.
As part of that effort, this edition of Travel Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 1st Edition (2021) was developed in accordance with the 2015 ANA requirements. This latest edition includes an expanded scope of practice statement to more fully document the travel health nursing specialty as well as expanded competencies. In addition, ATHNA created an application of the provisions of the ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses with interpretive statements for travel health nurses, Application of Code of Ethics Provisions by Travel Health Nurses.
Description:
| Book Name | Travel Health Nursing |
| Author of Book | |
| Edition | 1st |
| Language | English |
| Format | |
| Category | BSN Nursing Books |
Travel Health Nursing 1st edition PDF Free Download link is here
