Medications must be continued until the vaccine becomes effective. She should contact the state of local health department immediately about the outbreak and report cases to the local health department. The Watson Caring Theory may be infused in the role and functions of the community health nurse when treating and caring for patients or victims of influenza. Jean Watson's 10 carative factors can translate into clinical caritas processes and bring about subject healing processes that can help speed up the recovery of a patient as an individual, as part of a family or as a member of the community. In applying Watson's caring theory or model, the nurse can form or build a humanistic-altruistic system of values with the individual patient, the family or community; instill faith and hope; become more sensitive to them in their suffering; develop a more trusting relationship with them; elicit and accept their expression of positive or negative feelings; promote a creative problem-solving caring process with them; induce a transpersonal teaching-learning environment; build a supportive, protective and corrective or curative physical, mental, social and spiritual environment; help gratify other human needs; and allow necessary existential-phenomenological-spiritual forces to form and work for speedy healing.

Summary and Conclusion

The 1918-1919 flu pandemic makes plain the nightmarish threat of new strains that natural human resistance cannot fend of and for which the world is hardly prepared. Tamiflu can cover only 2.3 million Americans or less than 1% of its population. Health care budget rose from $40 to $419 million in the past 5 years, but the quality and level or preparedness have not been satisfactory to health experts. Experiments to counteract H5N1 have been error and failure-prone. The Influenza a virus is seen as capable of recombining and creating new strains of the viral disease every 10 to 15 years with a completely new structure that can cause major epidemics...

This constant antigenic change will require new vaccines to be developed on a regular basis and will always outpace these vaccines, as the new strains are expected to spread quickly in crowded places, especially schools and workplaces. Absenteeism is seen to increase and prove economically disastrous. The community health nurse must respond more effectively to the need of the hour. She must expand to combine nursing know-how and public health practice in providing assistance and support to the stricken or exposed individual, family and community.
Bibliography

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2004). Influenza: the Disease. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease.htm

Ghosh, T. (2004). Preventing Widespread Influenza: Influenza Surveillance Activities. Public Health Update. http://www.tchd.org/pdfs/update9.04_flu.pdf

Keen, a. (1995). Influenza. Virology lectures. Department of Medical Microbiology: University of Cape Town. http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/mmi/jmondie/influen2.html

La Porte, RE. (2005). Influenza: Epidemiology, Prevention and Control. A Supercourse. Global Health Network. http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0652/index.htm

Public Health Agency of Canada. (2004). Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan. http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/influenza/pandemicplan_e.html

Russell, S. (2005). Flu Pandemic Looms, Experts Warn World. New York Times Syndicate: Medline Plus. http://www.nlm, nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_2488.html

Smith, J.F. (2005). Influenza. Dr. Joseph F. Smith Medical Library: The Thompson Corporation. http://www.chclibrary.org/micromed/00053640.html

Zimmerman, R.K. (2005). Recent Changes in Influenza Epidemiology and Vaccination Recommendations. The Journal of Family Practice, vol 54 # 1. http://www.jfponline.com/supplements/JFP_Jan_05/WYE_J_2_influenza