From the definition point of view, community health nursing is a form of nursing that protect and promote population health through an incorporated social, public, and nursing health sciences. However, public health nursing is a systematic process where the assessment of health and healthcare care needs is done during the identification of individuals, families, and subpopulations that need health promotion or at risk of prevailing illness (Harris, 2016). An intervention plan is developed by the community to identify and meet people’s needs and provide support based on available resources. Any plan implementation takes into account equitable, efficiency, and effective evaluations as far as health status impact on the prevailing population is concerned.
The plan and process from the community directly influence healthcare service delivery, local, state, as well as national health policy development and health resources deployment. Resource availability, nursing practice standards, objectives, and philosophy coupled with current scientific knowledge as well as community expectations, strengths, and needs to define the systematic process within the public health. Public health nurses work hand in hand with the community to prevent disease attack as well as promote health for the whole population groups. They are responsible for providing support, process evaluation, and needs assessment based on the population contexts.
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Levels of Prevention
Prevention is related to health on account that it is a process where an individual takes the initiative to avoid any disease attack before it affects him or her ( Anderson, Prohaska & Satariano, 2015 ). Prevention process would incur plans, measures, and onset disease impediment. There are three main levels of prevention, namely primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention dwells on the measures undertaken to ensure that there is an impediment onset of injury or illness. Examples include taking into consideration regular exercise as well as immunization activities, an exercise done by an adult and to the babies, respectively.
Secondary prevention involves measures taken during prompt treatment as well as early diagnosis of illness, injury, or disease in the course of preventing severe problem development. This level of prevention requires an individual to get certain skills that would help him or her detect any disease as early as possible through the help of health extension practitioners. Example of secondary prevention involves breast self-examination as well as high blood pressure screening. Tertiary prevention is the last level of prevention that involve measures aiming at the rehabilitation of significant illness an individual is suffering from adverse effects ( Anderson, Prohaska & Satariano, 2015 ). The tertiary level involves healthcare workers who oversee and work together with the affected patients in retaining, rehabilitating and re-educating them as a struggle with the developed disability and impairment. Example of tertiary prevention includes the management programs for chronic disease such as arthritis, diabetes, and depression as well as rehabilitation programs for diseases such as stroke or cardiac.
Roles and Responsibilities of Community Nurses
A community nurse offers support and engages the whole communities as opposed to the roles and responsibilities of other nursing position. There are various roles and responsibilities for community nurses in the community and public health nursing. First, community nurses double up as disease prevention specialists, where they would oversee both short and long term disease prevention and care delivery. In most cases, community nurses would control or avert the spread of communicable diseases such as flu. Additionally, they would help patients to observe self-management, especially at tertiary prevention level ( Smolowitz et al., 2015 ). Second, community nurses act as educator and leaders in community health centers where they help all patients comprehend medical materials, and understand any medical requirements, teach more about sex in marriage and overall disease management.
Additionally, community nurses would adopt quality-based practices and implement policy changes for successful health implementations and associated outcomes to the surrounding communities. Roles and responsibilities of public nurses include researcher, advocate, and caregiver. As a researcher, community nurses can collect and use local evidence as well as validate public health programs that when used, improves the general health of communities. As an advocate, community nurses provide a link between local, state, and federal government where equal distribution of resources is evident without health disparities.
Current Issues facing Community nurses
There are several current issues community nurses face. First, it becomes a challenge to manage infectious diseases such as tuberculosis which gets out of control in many populated areas such as urban settings. Preventable disease, accidents, violence, injuries, and toxins are among the challenges attributes that threaten well-being and children health with no option for community nurses to help, despite their efforts ( Cherry & Jacob, 2016 ). However, public health nurses face challenges such as unequal insurance and healthcare access, an aspect that has increased both mortality and mobility rates among vulnerable populations, pregnant women, and infants. Additionally, health care access inequalities double up as the current issues facing public nurses during service delivery. Finally, the lack of specialized community nurses leads to service vulnerabilities as the available community nurses tend to be overwhelmed by a large number of patients in need of their services.
References
Anderson, L. A., Prohaska, T. R., & Satariano, W. A. (2015). Prevention. The Encyclopedia of Adulthood and Aging , 1-5.
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management . Elsevier Health Sciences.
Harris, M. J. (2016). Evaluating public and community health programs . John Wiley & Sons.
Smolowitz, J., Speakman, E., Wojnar, D., Whelan, E. M., Ulrich, S., Hayes, C., & Wood, L. (2015). Role of the registered nurse in primary health care: Meeting health care needs in the 21st century. Nursing Outlook , 63 (2), 130-136.
