Community Nursing: Role And Importance In Healthcare Delivery Essay.

Need to choose one speciality nursing such as a cardiac nurse, oncology nurse, medical-surgical nurse, community etc. Need to write an essay with high evidence-based research. 

Nursing Theories and Community Nursing

Nursing careers have gained the momentum and are in high demand than ever before. Depending on the increasing population of any country, the demand for the nurses also increases proportionally. The demands are high for the skilled nurses that have the requisite training and advanced education. The another reason for the high demand for these skilled nurses are the ever increasing costs of healthcare which employs the nurses on the frontline. Doctors now are more specialized and spend less time with the patients, due to this nurses are taking up the active role in the healthcare delivery. Community nursing is another specialized field that employs nurses to work with the patients and their families in order to maintain proper health, prevent disease and treat the health associated problems (Maurer and Smith 2013). The main aims of the community nursing involve maintaining a healthy lifestyle, patient independence and also proving the assistance and guidance to the carers. The study deals with the community nursing and its care delivery to the patient.

There are several nursing theories based on community nursing, however for this study the theory proposed by Nola Pender is considered. The model focusses on specifically three areas: behavioral outcomes, behavior dependent knowledge and its effect, patient characteristics and experiences. The health promotion model focusses on the each and every individual and their personal behavioral characteristics and their subsequent actions depend upon their experiences. This theory effectively helps a community nurse to analyze the behavior of the individual depending on the personal factors like biological, socio-cultural and psychological. Knowing these factors actively help in monitoring an individual’s behavior. Within the behavioral characteristics the community nurse can identify the probable barriers in the delivery of the healthcare, and the positive outcomes that can be achieved from a particular health behavior. All these activities amalgamated together help to promote the positive health behaviors (Alaviani et al. 2015).

Nursing theories are a set of relationships and definitions and assumptions that help to depict a medical scenario in a systematic way. Nursing has its linkages with the several aspects like the patient/client, health, environment and nursing itself. Nursing theories guides a nurse during a nursing practice and the practice in turn generates knowledge; theories help to describe nursing; enables the nurses to what they intend to do and how they will perform it. There are several types of nursing theories like the grand theories which are complex and broad; descriptive theories which are elementary level of development of theory; middle range theories address the reflective practices and specific phenomena; prescriptive theories are nursing interventions and its effective prediction of the consequences (Cowden and Cummings 2012). Theories are used because it reduces the gap between the research and the theory; theory acts as a guidance in the usage of techniques and ideas; nursing theories also helps in reframing the thinking of a nurse. Thus to correlate nursing theory with the nursing specialty like community nursing, first of all the role and duties of a community nurse needs a clear understanding (Harkness and DeMarco 2016). The functions of a community nurse are: care provided to a patient after hospital stay; generalized nursing care provide to the patient suffering from chronic condition; hospital type care to the patient outside the hospital environment; palliative nursing care to the patients who are suffering from life limiting illness and at the same time require health care outside the hospital; management of wound. For correlation, nursing theory helps the nurse by the following ways: patient data organization, understanding and analysis of patient data, nursing interventions decisions, patient care planning, prediction and evaluation of the probable outcomes of patient care (Reuben and Tinetti 2012). 

Role and Importance of Community Nursing in Healthcare

Community nursing involves not only the care delivered to the patient and the community as a whole. However, properly educating the family and also proper involvement of the family in care delivery is an important aspect of community nursing. Involving the family of the patient there are certain aspects like person centered care, patient and family education. Person centered care is an approach of care delivery in which the patient involved is considered to be an equal partner during the care planning. The plan is designed according to the needs and comfort of the patient. However, the role of the family cannot be neglected. During the designing of the care plan, the role of the family plays a major part because when the nurse is not near or is absent. At that moment the family acts as the care giver (Northouse et al. 2012). Although the nurse provides the care to the patient, but however there are times when a nurse cannot be with the patient and at that time the family is required to take the necessary role. Thus, for the same purpose the community nurses also play a major role patient and family educator. One of the major benefits of patient and family education is that the education helps the concerned family and the patient to make better decisions in care delivery. The question of education comes when there is a need for the family and the patient to effectively communicate with the nursing staff and physician. Other sort of education include access to specific services like nutritional therapy, rehabilitation and preparation of the patient for discharge and also if the continuation of the research is required. To provide the effective education it is important first to assess the patient and his/her family. Education and knowledge are both required when the patient is present within the hospital or when he or she is discharged from the hospital. Thus, the education includes providing information on the issues like additional care through the community resources and required follow-up after hospital discharge, emergency services when necessary (Timmins 2012).

Wound care by the community nurses involve the delivery of care to the patient in their home. It was found that, patient participating in their own plan of care can yield better outcomes and even quickens the wound healing rates. Wound care in a community setting involves some of the challenges which include time detection, management of the exudate, prevention of the infection well within the time. The most important part includes the infection control and its prevention measures and it also involves decontamination of the body before a surgical procedure. The control measures of the infection prevention include maintenance of hygiene (Kelcíkova, Skodova and Straka 2012). The implementation of hygiene includes not only the patient but also the family of the patient. Maintaining hygiene prevents the patient from contracting any infectious disease. Whereas, the same is true for the family. In order to quicken the recovery of the patient, the family members can keep the home environment clean and maintain hygiene. Medication management is an important part in community nursing which involves providing the right dose of medication to the right number of people. Providing the correct medication or the medication management is an important skill which requires knowledge and skill (Happell, Hoey and Gaskin 2012).

Therefore, from the above study it can be concluded that specialty nursing is a specialized field which only the skilled nurses that possess the necessary skills and expertise. The recent rise in demand of the specialty nurses bring in more complex care delivery. One such specialty is the community nursing which effectively focusses on a specific community and its subsequent care delivery. There are certain aspects of community nursing like person centered care, wound care, patient education, infection control, patient assessment, medication administration. 

References

Alaviani, M., Khosravan, S., Alami, A. and Moshki, M., 2015. The Effect of a Multi-Strategy Program on Developing Social Behaviors Based on Pender’s Health Promotion Model to Prevent Loneliness of Old Women Referred to Gonabad Urban Health Centers. International journal of community based nursing and midwifery, 3(2), p.132.

Cowden, T.L. and Cummings, G.G., 2012. Nursing theory and concept development: a theoretical model of clinical nurses’ intentions to stay in their current positions. Journal of advanced nursing, 68(7), pp.1646-1657.

Happell, B., Hoey, W. and Gaskin, C.J., 2012. Community mental health nurses, caseloads, and practices: A literature review. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 21(2), pp.131-137.

Harkness, G.A. and DeMarco, R.F., 2016. Community and public health nursing: Evidence for practice. Wolters Kluwer.

Kelcíkova, S., Skodova, Z. and Straka, S., 2012. Effectiveness of hand hygiene education in a basic nursing school curricula. Public Health Nursing, 29(2), pp.152-159.

Maurer, F.A. and Smith, C.M., 2013. Community/public health nursing practice: Health for families and populations. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Northouse, L., Williams, A.L., Given, B. and McCorkle, R., 2012. Psychosocial care for family caregivers of patients with cancer. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 30(11), pp.1227-1234.

Reuben, D.B. and Tinetti, M.E., 2012. Goal-oriented patient care—an alternative health outcomes paradigm. New England Journal of Medicine, 366(9), pp.777-779.

Timmins, F., 2012. Effective Communication with Patients. Nurse Education in Practice, 12(2), p.e19.