Considering a career in nursing? Consider public health, say officials

WELLINGTON COUNTY – Most of us would think of a career in nursing as working in a hospital or doctor’s office, and many people choose that career path because they want to, quite literally, nurse people back to health.

But give public health a thought as another way to put nursing skills to work, says Rita Isley, vice president of community health and chief nursing officer with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health (WDGPH).

Isley has been with WDGPH for 25 years, first as a public health nurse in various departments, eventually working her way up the management ladder.

Before that she worked in acute care but couldn’t find stable work during the early 1990s and decided to go back to school and retrain for a career in public health.

“That’s where I wanted to have an impact,” she said in an interview with the Advertiser.

Joining the interview was Rachel McDougall, a public health nurse with WDGPH who works in the Healthy Babies Healthy Children and Prenatal Care Access programs, where she often visits with families before a baby is born to advise, educate and provide support.

“I never wanted to work in a hospital,” McDougall said. 

“I worked in other community settings because I enjoy working with people. But at public health, we try to do more preventative care. 

“It takes less money (for the health care system as a whole) to promote healthy lifestyles than treat people who are sick.”

Public health uses data to determine its programs and how to deploy its army of public health nurses, who are all trained registered nurses who could work in any health care setting.

“Most nurses don’t go to nursing school to become public health nurses,” Isley acknowledged. 

“But as they get into the world and work in different organizations, they realize the impact of public health. We work from the other end and it’s very positive and uplifting.”

McDougall said she particularly enjoys working in the prenatal program, where she visits pregnant people and gets to know not just them, but their families.

They come from all walks of life – many clients would be financially challenged or have life circumstances that make bringing a baby into the world really difficult.

McDougall said the advice she offers can impact the health of the whole family in positive ways, and that’s very satisfying.

“It’s so difficult to be a parent, so to help a family problem solve; to create plans and offer support, it’s gratifying. And the benefits are long term, long after I leave their home,” she said.

Isley noted that during the pandemic, most public health programs were put on hold and staff redeployed to provide the vaccine when it became available.

“In some ways it served to reinforce what we were doing before,” Isley said. “But we should not have stopped everything. We are still seeing the impact of COVID in children and youth, and across the lifespan. People are still struggling.”

“Mental health is a lot of what we do too,” McDougall said, adding depression and anxiety are sky-high in almost all age brackets.

Isley hopes registered nurses will consider public health as a viable and satisfying career path.

“Public health nurse is a very important profession of the health care system,” she said, noting as many are nearing retirement age, “We want to see people fill our shoes.”