The core role of a community nurse is to provide education and service on healthcare to the public. A community nurse provides services of caring for the sick, promoting proper health seeking behavior and preventing diseases to individuals and entire communities. These important services are able to reach the people through the community nurse since not everyone is able access quality health services from health facilities (Adib-Hajbaghery, 2013). A community nurse therefore differs from other nurses in the sense that, he or she provides services for the whole population of an area while other nurses focus on patients at health facilities.
The primary objectives of community nursing include; active involvement in developing a community health plan, provision of health services to public, carry out research on health aspects of a community and assume a coordination role with other health team members. Community health nurses should manage resources at their disposal prudently to ensure proper delivery of healthcare services. Through these objectives, the community nurse is able to provide education and empowerment, mobilize essential partnerships and provide care services where they are unavailable. These are part of the core essential purposes of public health.
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A community nurse should be able to perform these duties and roles while exercising equality and nondiscrimination. They should also promote and encourage cooperation between the community and public health teams. In situations where environmental and cultural values may lead poor health, the community nurse should be a champion in encouraging change of values in the society (Subbiah, 2017). These may especially apply to changing practices that may lead to higher risk of lifestyle diseases and poor oral health. Evidently, community nurses play a critical role in improving the health of families and vulnerable populations with limited access to health facilities.
Case Study 1
In the information gathering process, the role of the advisory board is to oversee the processes involved in collecting information. The board is responsible in ensuring scientific and methods are used in the research process and will inform the community health nurse on the correct procedures. The advisory board is also tasked in ensuring the community’s well being are considered and their rights protected during the process. It is the board’s interest to guarantee safety of those community members that will be directly involved in the process. The board should be diverse and include members that are knowledgeable in information gathering process.
The representatives from target and service communities are another key group in the information gathering process. These representatives will express the opinions of the community on the subject matter and ensure the needs of the community are met. They will also advocate for the wellbeing of those community members that will directly participate in the process of gathering information. The representatives will promote the process and reassure the community on the benefits of participating in it. These representatives will also be essential in dissemination of the findings and promoting recommendations to the community. For a community health nurse to execute his or her roles effectively, they will require the assistance of community representatives to provide a direct link to the community.
Social marketing strategies and techniques are not only important but effective in promoting health services and behaviors in the community. A community health nurse may apply social marketing to investigate and determine cultural behaviors linked to a particular health condition and persuade the community to change them (Christian & Enas, 2016). Since the persuasion theories of social marketing have been proven and tested in commerce, they can also be adapted to spread information on health to a specifically target group in the community. Examples of social marketing techniques at the disposal of a community nurse include community outreaches and mass media promotion of health messages.
In making the grant for dietary education, I would allocate resources to outreach programs and mass media promotions as strategies to offer education to the target group. The education program will include nutrition on low fat diets and appropriate DASH diets. This education program will target people who have previously had heart attack, people with risk factors for heart attack and close family members of the people in those two categories. The outreach program will mainly be conducted through personal visitation to identified households of potential target population, while the mass media campaign will be done through local radio advertisement and programs.
References
Adib-Hajbaghery M. (2013). Nurses role in the community. Nursing and midwifery studies , 2 (2), 169–170. https://doi.org/10.5812/nms.11714
Christian, B. & Enas, A. (2016). The Impact of Social Marketing on Public Behavior . European Journal of Engineering Research and Science. https://www.ejers.org/index.php/ejers/article/view/193
Subbiah, K. (2017). Role of community health nurse as a change agent. International Journal of Current Advanced Research, 6, 2534 – 2538. https//doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2017.2538.0044
