Emerging Infectious Diseases

Throughout history, nurses have played key roles in recognizing and responding to emerging
disease threats across the care continuum. Hall and Kashin used both document and in-depth
content analyses methodologies to examine media portrayals of nurses’ roles during the
western Africa 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic (Hall & Kashin, 2016).
Findings from the data analysis pointed to lack of public awareness regarding nurses’ critical
roles and the gap in system preparedness for such global health events. International Council of
Nurses (ICN) issued a position statement related to “reducing travel-related communicable
disease transmission". In that position statement, the ICN supports the position that nurses are
“uniquely positioned to assist governments and other agencies to implement and evaluate”
communicable disease outbreak prevention and response. Additionally, nurses’ have valuable
expertise, competencies, and grassroots perspectives to impact the prevention, spread, and
management of infectious disease outbreaks. They are positioned for important roles in care
delivery, education, leadership, and policy making to influence population health outcomes .
Nurses in all settings and roles are key contributors to emerging disease prevention, response,
and management. Nurses in roles at micro-, macro-, or meso-system levels bring important
expertise, and perspectives to healthcare teams to plan, implement, and evaluate response to
emerging disease outbreaks and epidemics. Nurse understanding of and expertise regarding
care delivery models, complex systems, resources, infection prevention and control principles,
and biopsychosocial human needs make them valuable assets as leaders and members of
interprofessional healthcare, community, and legislative advocacy preparedness.
Global health issues do not exist in a vacuum; they are problems of high complexity that must
be fully and comprehensively considered. Simple solutions do not exit. These multidimensional
problems require global collaboration, organization, and resources, applied with a bold vision
and true commitment. The lens of social justice may better frame solutions required at micro-,
meso-, and macro-system levels.