Introduction
Any person who once served in the active military, air, or naval forces and was released honorably is considered a veteran. The combat experience makes them vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, jeopardizing their quality of life. Community health interventions must, therefore, be developed to ensure that veterans live in better conditions.
Healthy People 2020 is the federal government’s prevention agenda to ensure people lead healthier lives. In line with the prevention agenda, the US government established the Veterans Health Administration to ensure that ex-military personnel lead longer and healthier lives. The paper aims to evaluate how the treatment of the veteran community is aligned with Healthy People 2020.
Community Nursing Intervention
PTSD and substance abuse are the leading healthcare issues that affect veterans and must be reduced. The relevant community nursing intervention is to offer psychological first aid for cognitive restructuring. Exposure therapy is the foremost intervention that can be used for better outcomes by helping them cope with the trauma, so that they can get used to it (Gerber, 2019). Further, mentorship and family therapy are quintessential for improving outcomes in the discourse. The exposure and mentorship help the veterans adapt to the environment and successfully transition from the military to civilian life.
Special Consideration for the Veterans
The selected community is a unique group because of their past training and experience. Based on the stereotyping of the group by the community, care workers may jeopardize output. The particular consideration includes training the nurses working with the veterans to avoid bias and stereotyping and creating a culture of trust (Franco et al., 2021). Since most veterans are known to be rigid and inflexible, primary care workers must be active listeners to formulate better working relationships with the veterans.
Evaluation Plan
The waiting time, patient satisfaction, and general feedback on the quality of care will measure progress. A scale of one to ten will be used to evaluate the services’ efficiency and satisfaction rate. The feedback will determine the subsequent courses of action.
The primary goal of Healthy People 2020 is to ensure that people lead a higher quality of life. In 2014, whistleblowers in the USA noted that most veterans lost their lives while waiting for services (Dellefield et al., 2021). The evaluation plan collects feedback and aligns actions to the primary goal.
The first step in the evaluation plan is to ensure the response time for all requested services. Further, the patient satisfaction rate is an evaluation plan that ensures that all weaknesses are observed and addressed (Yearby, 2020). Measuring response time, patient satisfaction, and suggestion boxes ensures that all patients’ needs are understood and addressed in the discourse. The evaluation results will determine whether the Healthy People 2020 goals are met.
Common Biases in the Population and Subsequent Plans to Overcome Them
Veteran health biases and prejudices are drawn from the population because of the nature of their previous work. Community nurses working with veterans may think they are rigid and cannot take instructions. Consequently, service delivery and the Healthy People 2020 goals may be jeopardized. The critical methods of overcoming biases are training the staff and setting the ground rules before the engagement (Dellefield et al., 2021). Further, the caregivers must plan to have a better and more trusting relationship in the treatment plan. All assumptions must be declared before the start of counseling and therapy sessions.
Conclusion
The veterans are a unique community that requires special healthcare attention. The group’s vulnerability is cultivated by previous experience, which causes PTSD and other drug and substance abuse disorders. Through Healthy People 2020, the government formulated the Veterans Health Administration to ensure that they lead a better quality of life. However, biases and poor intervention jeopardize veterans’ health, and special nursing programs must be set aside to avoid bias, improve outcomes, and ensure that all plans are met by incorporating an evaluation plan. The veteran’s quality of life will be improved when effective community nursing interventions are implemented and evaluated in line with the Healthy People 2020 objectives.
References
Dellefield, M. E., Madrigal, C. B., Verkaaik, C., & Close, J. (2021). Nursing surveillance and immediate jeopardy in veteran health administration community living centers unannounced survey program 2018 to 2019. Nursing Outlook, 69(2), 182-192. Web.
Ferguson, J. M., Jacobs, J., Yefimova, M., Greene, L., Heyworth, L., & Zulman, D. M. (2021). Virtual care expansion in the veterans’ health administration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Clinical services and patient characteristics associated with utilization. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(3), 453–462. Web.
Franco, Z., Hooyer, K., Ruffalo, L., & Frey-Ho Fung, R. A. (2021). Veterans health and well-being—Collaborative research approaches: Toward veteran community engagement. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 61(3), 287–312. Web.
Gerber, M. R. (Ed.). (2019). Trauma-informed healthcare approaches: a guide for primary care. Springer.
Yearby, R. (2020). Structural racism and health disparities: Reconfiguring the social determinants of health framework to include the root cause. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 48(3), 518–526. Web.