Israel—Team nursing in public health

Abstract

Abstract The State of Israel, established in 1948, has since trebled its population, primarily as a result of unselected mass immigration. With each wave of immigrants came serious public health problems, such as infant mortality, tuberculosis, and trachoma. The official and voluntary agencies with dedicated personnel confronted and overcame the dangers by emergency and long-range programs. Continued immigration required a constant alertness. The outstanding public health problems in Israel today are comparable with those of the Western world: mental health, chronic illness, and geriatrics. Co-ordinated planning of the health agencies, under the leadership of the Ministry of Health, emphasized comprehensive regional health services with a continuum of intra and extramural services for prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. Four major agencies offered public health nursing services, primarily in maternal, child, and school health. Experimental programs with integrated preventive and curative services for family health have met with success, and will probably be the future pattern. The shortage of professional nurses in Israel was reflected in public health nursing, Thirty-seven per cent of all the public health nursing service personnel were practical nurses, with a higher percentage of auxiliaries in the new development areas than in the cities. Some of the practical nurses worked in clinics under the direct supervision of professional nurses, others in independent field assignments under the guidance of the area supervisor. The practical nurses received an intensive orientation of several weeks to three months to prepare them for their specific assignment. Very few aides were employed in public health nursing. Resources of nursing personnel were from immigration (unknown quantity), and from the local schools of nursing, which graduated slightly over 200 registered nurses and about 400 practical nurses annually. Post-basic public health nursing preparation was given in three eight-month courses, with less than 40 graduates annually. It is expected that the public health nursing services will expand to provide extramural curative, rehabilitation, and habilitation programs necessitating an increase in personnel, and the delegation of activities to auxiliary personnel in a safe and efficient organizational pattern.