Community Nurses Role in Health Promotion

Definition of Community Health Nursing or Public Health Nursing:

Community health nursing involves several basic concepts, including the promotion of healthy living, prevention of disease and health problems, medical treatment, rehabilitation, evaluation of community health nursing care delivery and prevention systems, and research to further community health nursing and wellness.

A community nurse can serve direct care, educate individuals or the public, advocate for health improvements, and perform research in community health. It is the job of a community health nurse to help and keep the community health problems under control.

Characteristics of Community Health Nursing:

There are six important characteristics of community nursing; those are mentioned in the following:

• It is a specialty field of nursing.
• Its practice combines public health with nursing.
• It is population-based.
• It emphasizes wellness and other than disease or Illness.
• It includes interdisciplinary collaboration.
• It amplifies the client’s responsibility and self-care.

Functions of Community Health Nursing:

The four core functions of community health nursing practices are described below:

1. Identification of community culture and resources that lead as a key factor in the community health care delivery system.
2. Evaluate community health conditions, health risks, and problems to identify the health-care demands of the people.
3. Plan and implementation of comprehensive community health interventions, care, services, and programs.
4. Develop health policy at the local community level to drive policies/agreements at the state and national levels for collaborative endeavors and actions.

Functions of the Community Health Nurse:

There are seven major functions of a community health nurse, those are mentioned in the following:

1. Clinician,
2. Educator,
3. Advocate,
4. Managerial,
5. Collaborator,
6. Leader,
7. Researcher.

Roles and Responsibilities of Community Health Nurse:

Some key roles and responsibilities of community health nurse have discussed below:

1. Clinician Role or Direct care provider:

The clinician role in the community health nurse means the nurse ensures health care services, not just to individuals and families but also to groups and populations of the community. For community health nurses the clinician role involves certain emphasis different from basic nursing, i.e. – Holism, health promotion, and skill expansion

2. Educator Role:

It is widely recognized that health teaching is a part of good nursing practice and one of the major functions of a community health nurse (Brown, 1988). Assesses the knowledge, attitudes, values, beliefs, behaviors, practices, stage of change, and skills of the community people and provides health education according to knowledge level.

3. Advocate Role:

The issue of clients’ rights is important in health care today. Every patient or client has the right to receive just equal and humane treatment. A community health nurse is an advocate of patient’s rights about their care. They encourage the individuals to take the right food for maintaining health, the right drugs for the treatment, and the right services at the right place where ever needed. they provide sufficient information to make necessary health care decisions, promote community awareness of significant health problems.

4. Managerial Role:

As a manager the nurse exercises administrative direction towards the accomplishment of specified goals by assessing clients’ needs, planning and organizing to meet those needs, directing and controlling and evaluating the progress to assure that goal are met.

5. Collaborator Role:

Community health nurses seldom practice in isolation. They must work with many people including clients, other nurses, physicians, social workers, and community leaders, therapists, nutritionists, occupational therapists, psychologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, legislators, etc. as a member of the health team (Fairly 1993, Williams, 1986).

6. Leader Role:

Community health nurses are becoming increasingly active in the leader role. As a leader, the nurse instructs influences or persuades others to effect change that will positively affect people’s health. The leadership role’s primary function is to use a change of health policy based on community people’s health; thus, the community health nurse becomes an agent of change.

7. Research Role:

In the researcher role community health nurses engage in systematic investigation, collection, and analysis of data to solve problems and enhance community health nursing practice. Based on the research result community nurse improve their service quality and improve community people’s health.

Maria Mona

Maria Khatun Mona is a Founder and Editor of Nursing Exercise Blog. She is a Nursing and Midwifery Expert. Currently she is working as a Registered Nurse at Evercare Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has great passion in writing different articles on Nursing and Midwifery. Mail her at “maria.mona023@gmail.com”