A community refers to a group of people who possess common characteristics and live together within the same geographical location ( Spradley, 2005 ). Community health nursing is therefore described as a special section of nursing which encompasses skills of public health, nursing, and individual parts of healthcare services intended to provide improved medical care in both physical and social environment. The long-term goal of community health care nursing is to uplift the health care system of people in the community by assisting them in fighting common health threats and coping with healthy living practices (Eaton, 2000) . Therefore, a community health nurse is under the pressure of delivering to society because of the challenges they go through. Since the community is full of a diverse group of people, a community health nurse must adapt quickly to meet the needs of different groups ( Spradley, 2005 ). The primary role of a community health nurse is to provide quality patient care. They are also responsible for educating the public on the importance of healthy living and its role in decreasing disease outbreaks and even untimely deaths. They are also in charge of conducting screening services, administering immunizations, and dispensing medication at the community level.
How does the community health nurse assist the families of patients in their home settings?
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Community health nurses work tirelessly to provide quality care for patients in inefficient and stressful home settings or other more stringent environments. The incentives, culture, and structure of the system in which they operate are poorly designed to back their relentless efforts to respond to their patients' needs. Therefore, there is the need to recognize the imperative to center the system of health care in a manner that acknowledges families as key drivers in promoting the effectiveness of community health care practices and empowering the learning process. When patients and their families are inclined to achieve community health goals, both the economic outcome and experience of health care are greatly improved. Community health nurses supply vital information based on their scientific knowledge to the families of the patients and provide them with intervention options on how to take care of patients in the community. They have a role in educating families on the importance of maintaining a healthy environment, promoting healthy living, and providing patient-centered services. They are also responsible for developing a causal link between various paradigms of family and patient engagements to better the outcomes of health care.
What are some of the barriers related to the initiation of home care services in communities?
The concept of moving health care delivery to homes is motivated by the need to improve health care delivery and lower its cost. Several organizations, both new and already established, are striving to move both palliative and acute care to homes. Setting home-based care is suitable for vulnerable and frail who desperately need expensive care in hospitals and other institutions. However, even though there is room to improve the quality of healthcare delivery through the model of home-based care, there are several potential barriers that discourage its imminent adoption.
Concerns by clinicians
Several barriers can discourage clinicians from involvement in home-based care ( Kramer et al. (2017 ). it is because, unlike the hospital setting, attending for patients at home requires extended visits. Moreover, health physicians need extra time to address various economic and social conditions that affect the delivery of health care. Apart from dispensing medications, physicians are obligated to identify multiple safety issues and linking patients to social services. Another challenge faced by clinicians is visiting homes in places with high crime rates. There are numerous risk concerns related to the safety of patients in a home setting. The dangers include environmental issues such as sanitation, infection control, and lack of proper information to both family and patients and lack of effective monitoring services of patients.
How does living in an urban area versus a rural area affect home care services?
Over the years, there have been growing concerns that people in rural areas face limited access to health services ( Siconolfi et al. (2019 ). Less number of hospitals in rural areas has played a more significant part in heightening those concerns. Limited access to home-based care in rural areas is attributed to the absence of quicker means to access the regions, thus resulting in long travels. Longer travel times will translate to a high cost of service delivery above the intended levels of payments.
Fewer physicians are providing home-based care to patients in rural areas than in urban areas ( Coburn et al. (2019) . It is because the remoteness of the rural regions discourages health practitioners from visiting those places more regularly. The discrepancy between the number of visits in these areas suggests the need to find a lasting solution for the gap. From the perspective of health systems, the disparity in the number of medical physicians visiting those areas implies that there is a need to compare the satisfaction of patients and the impact of health care. For instance, if the outcomes were similar in both regions, additional medical supports need to be provided to supplement the fewer physicians to achieve satisfaction and save on the cost of treatment.
References
Coburn, A. F., Ziller, E. C., Paluso, N., Thayer, D., & Talbot, J. A. (2019). Long-term services and supports use among older Medicare beneficiaries in rural and urban areas. Research on Aging , 41 (3), 241-264.
Eaton, S. C. (2000). Beyond 'unloving care': Linking human resource management and patient care quality in nursing homes. International journal of human resource management , 11 (3), 591-616.
Kramer, B. J., Cote, S. D., Lee, D. I., Creekmur, B., & Saliba, D. (2017). Barriers and facilitators to implementation of VA home-based primary care on American Indian reservations: a qualitative multi-case study. Implementation Science , 12 (1), 109.
Siconolfi, D., Shih, R. A., Friedman, E. M., Kotzias, V. I., Ahluwalia, S. C., Phillips, J. L., & Saliba, D. (2019). Rural-urban disparities in access to home-and community-based services and supports: stakeholder perspectives from 14 states. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association , 20 (4), 503-508.
Spradley, W. B., & Judith, A. A. (2005). Community health nursing. Concepts and practice .
