Community health nurses are tasked with assessing community needs ( Thill, 2019) . Such needs cover both health factors and find out what needs to be done to help people in a given community. By making the necessary research to find out what the community needs, community nurses can direct medical programs that can be used to make communities better. Community health nurses help with resource identification. That is, they help to identify what can be used to help the health sector become better by finding the potential factors that can improve medical healthcare ( World Health Organization, 2017) . Additionally, community health nurses treat patients through such functions as patient screening, administering immunizations, and dispensing medications. Also, community health nurses participate in healthcare coordination. That is done through educating communities on the need to maintain a healthy lifestyle through educational programs and distributing healthcare-related items such as pregnancy tests and condoms. Community health nurses connect with communities through awareness creation of their cultural, religious, and political inclinations. Application of healthcare’s current scientific research is also done by community nurses which help to improve the healthcare system.
How does the community health nurse assist the families of patients in their home settings?
Community health nurses let them understand the situation they are facing when they are taking care of a patient and having a patient in their house ( World Health Organization, 2017) . In such a case, a community health nurse is tasked with making the family appreciate the condition they are living in and show them they are the only person who the patient can be close to.
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Additionally, community health nurses let the families of a patient help in taking care of their patients. The idea is to create a strong bond between the family and the patient and turn the home into both a hospital and a home at the same time.
Families with patients at home might find it challenging to live with a patient unless they are shown how to do it. Community health nurses have to make sure that the administering of medicine does not alienate the family from the patient by helping the family actively engage themselves in maintaining the necessary family bond.
Community health nurses also show family members of a family on how to take care of patients ( Thill, et al, 2019) . As the community health nurse is not always available, he or she trains family members on how to care for the patient while at home. The idea is to reduce any pressure the family might be experiencing when it comes to making sure their loved one is comfortable.
Community health nurses show family members how to administer medication and respond correctly to the needs of the patient.
Family members are known to be affected when they have a patient in their home ( World Health Organization, 2017) . They are always concerned about the wellbeing of their loved ones. As such, community health nurses prepare them psychologically and provide a comfortable environment in which they do not have to worry about the patient to the extent that they are affected.
What are some of the barriers related to the initiation of home care services in communities?
The increase in healthcare costs by frail sick patients has affected service delivery. As patients get sicker, they demand longer visits by community health nurses. As such, it has become impossible to cater to sick patients who cannot afford to pay for their medical bills. Hospitals and healthcare centers have been left exposed to straining conditions under which service delivery of home-based care.
In most cases, sickest patients make it hard to bring healthcare to patients. Most community health nurses visit 5-7 patients per day ( Thill, et al., 2019) . As such, patients who require longer attention are reducing the number of visits a community health nurse makes which affects the amount of time spent on other patients.
Differences in patient preferences have also made sure that the delivery of homecare by community health nurses has been affected ( Stanhope, et al., 2019) . For instance, elderly citizens prefer treatment in a hospital setting while younger people prefer treatment at home. Different views such as the quality of medical care delivery and patient’s attitude are different. In that case, quality delivery has been affected.
Many clinicians have raised concerns about homecare delivery ( Stanhope, et al., 2019) . Some clinicians feel that the time taken to understand different social settings is longer than if service delivery was done at home. At the same time, service delivery requires that a community health nurse make different visits which are lengthy and more demanding while at the same time the number of patients attended to is small.
The lack of supportive infrastructure for home-based care has affected service delivery. For instance, a shortage of Durable Medical Equipment (DME) which assists patients has increased service delivery. Also, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has resulted in competitive bidding for contracts which has affected the amount of equipment available which has been redundant.
How does living in an urban area versus a rural area affect home care services?
Urban areas provide confined settings where patients can be accessed within short vicinity. That kind of setting ensures that community health nurses travel fewer distances and they can offer maximum attention to patients. Also, urban settings allow for the maximum number of hospitals. The number of community health nurses in urban centers is so many that living at one end of the town does not mean one has to wait longer for a community health nurse to get to the ( Stanhope, et al., 2019) . In such a case, quality is assured in that a nurse is allocated specific patients which they have to take care of. Additionally, the amount of time a community health nurse takes when responding to an emergency case in an urban is high. Nurses can get to their patients in time which equates to more lives saved. Urban settings offer diversification in that people living in them belong to different socio-economic and cultural settings ( Stanhope, et al., 2019) . As such, an urban community health nurse must learn how to accommodate their differences and work with them. It gives urban communities better service delivery which ensures comfortable settings for patients.
On the other hand, rural areas have sparse populations. As such, distances traveled by community health nurses are longer ( Thill, et al., 2019) . In that case, service delivery is affected in that community health nurses might not be able to offer medical services to the maximum number of patients. Also, rural areas have few hospitals. Considering the large area that has to be served, community health nurses have their efforts stretched to the limit. In that case, patients are left vulnerable especially if the number of them served is many. Long distances see the allocation of more patients to community health nurses ( Thill, et al., 2019) . Such nurses have to improvise in that they have to let the community work with them and together through training them on community healthcare and the need to stay safe which means to improve health safety. The idea is advantageous in that such training programs shrink the distance covered and nurses have to compensate for traveling long distances to attend to patients with community knowledge. The fact that rural areas are always composed of people with similar socio-economic and cultural beliefs means that community health nurses have less trouble when dealing with their patients and their communities.
References
Stanhope, M., Faan, R. D., Lancaster, J., & Faan, R. P. (2019). Public Health Nursing E-Book:
Population-Centered Health Care in the Community . Elsevier Health Sciences.
Thill, N., Pettersen, L., & Erickson, A. (2019). A Reality Tour in Rural and Public Health
Nursing. Online Journal of Rural Nursing & Health Care , 19 (1).
World Health Organization. (2017). Enhancing the role of community health nursing for
universal health coverage.
