ASSIGNMENT: MEASURES USED IN EPIDEMIOLOGY

ASSIGNMENT: MEASURES USED IN EPIDEMIOLOGY

Measures Used in Epidemiology

Epidemiology entails the study of determinants and distribution of health problems in populations and intervention applications to control or manage health problems. Nurses use their knowledge of epidemiology to diagnose, manage, monitor, and evaluate the effectiveness of population-centered interventions in elevating a health problem. Knowledge of different epidemiological concepts and terms is important for nurses. Therefore, this essay examines the concepts of mortality and morbidity, as used in epidemiology and nursing practice.

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The selected items for this paper are mortality and morbidity. Morbidity refers to the instances of disease or disability in a population due to a cause such as obesity, hypertension, or heart disease in a given period. Morbidity also refers to the state of being unhealthy or symptomatic due to a disease. Epidemiologists use incidence or prevalence to represent morbidity. Mortality refers to the number of deaths in a population within a given period due to a specific cause. Mortality can be reported as an absolute or a rate number (Friis & Sellers, 2020). Epidemiologists represent the mortality rate per 1000 people.

Mortality and morbidity are used in epidemiology for disease surveillance purposes. The terms provide insights into disease severity and progression in a population. Nurses and other healthcare providers use them to understand the risk factors of health problems in a population and compare health events between and among populations (Curley, 2020). An accurate assessment of mortality and morbidity helps understand and evaluate the impact of a health problem and its trajectory.

Morbidity and mortality measures strengthen nursing practice. Firstly, nurses use the measures to assess the disease impact and burden on a population. Nurses can determine the severity of a health problem in the population by analyzing morbidity and mortality rates. The data informs the appropriateness of nursing interventions that are adopted to improve the health and well-being of the population. Morbidity and mortality also help nurses to determine the effectiveness of the adopted interventions in promoting population health. For example, a decrease in the morbidity rate of infectious diseases following the implementation of a public health initiative will translate into its effectiveness. However, an increase in mortality and morbidity rates will imply that the interventions were ineffective in addressing the cause of the health problem. Nurses can also use morbidity and mortality measures to identify the risk factors and progression of a health problem (Curley, 2020; Slater et al., 2012). This understanding enables them to adopt strategies that will interrupt the disease progression and promote optimum population health.

Nurses will not understand the severity of a health problem in a population if they do not use morbidity and mortality measures in their practice. They will also not understand the importance of epidemiological surveillance in their practice. Nurses will also be inadequately prepared to compare and contrast various health events in their populations. This lack of understanding will lower their contribution to initiatives that are adopted to promote population health (Friis & Sellers, 2020; Soh et al., 2020). Nurses will adopt interventions that fail to address health disparities in the populations they serve.

In conclusion, morbidity and mortality are epidemiological measures of surveillance in health. Morbidity and mortality help in determining disease progression, severity, and associated risk factors in the population. Morbidity and mortality measures strengthen nursing practice. Failure to use these measures will result in an inadequate determination of the disease burden in a population. It will also affect the appropriateness of population health interventions adopted to eliminate health disparities.

Curley, A.L.C. (2020). Population-Based Nursing: Concepts and Competencies for Advanced Practice. Springer Publishing Company.

Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. (2020). Epidemiology for public health practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Slater, M. B., Anand, V., Uleryk, E. M., & Parshuram, C. S. (2012). A systematic review of RIFLE criteria in children, and its application and association with measures of mortality and morbidity. Kidney International, 81(8), 791–798. https://doi.org/10.1038/ki.2011.466

Soh, C. H., Ul Hassan, S. W., Sacre, J., & Maier, A. B. (2020). Morbidity Measures Predicting Mortality in Inpatients: A Systematic Review. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 21(4), 462-468.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2019.12.001