Assignment: Windshield Survey/Community Assessment

Conduct a “Windshield Survey” in a section of your community. Instructions for the survey can be found in Stanhope and Lancaster (2016) on page 416, Table 18-6. As you notice, conducting a Windshield Survey requires that you either walk around or drive around a particular section of the community and take notes about what you observe. A Windshield Survey cannot be conducted by reviewing websites or Google Earth only. It requires actually taking a look at the selected area of the community. This survey should be focused on the problem and population you have selected for your practicum project. If you choose, for example, obesity among Hispanic schoolchildren, you might want to locate a section of the community where many Hispanic children live, or you might want to conduct the Windshield Survey around where Hispanic children attend school. If Hispanic children are not found in a specific section of your community (e.g., Chinatown in San Francisco or Harlem in New York), then you may select the section of the community where you live or work but pay particular attention to your practicum population and practicum problem as you conduct a survey of the community as viewed through the eyes of the public health nurse.

By Day 7 of Week 3
Submit a 3- to 4-page paper including:

Introduction to the community, including the name of the community and any interesting or historical facts you would like to add about where you live
Photographs of the selected area of the community that serve as evidence of your observations and hypotheses
Windshield Survey findings, including a description of the section of your community that you chose to survey
Description of the Vulnerable Population and Available Resources
Demographics of the vulnerable population
What social determinants create their vulnerable status?
What community strengths exist to assist this population?
Conclusions based on Nursing Assessment of the Community
Based on what you have found, what conclusions can you draw about your community and your selected population for your practicum?
Select at least 5 scholarly resources to support your assessment. Websites may be included but the paper must include scholarly resources in its development.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument