Community Health Nursing and scope of Community Health Nursing

Community is a group of people living together in a geographical boundaries sharing the same culture, value and environment. Community Health depends upon the way of people living and their environment. So, health program are formed and implement according to the health needs of particular community.

Community

Community is defined as a group of people who live together in a geographical area sharing common beliefs, interest, needs and organization.
Community is defined as social group living in localized area under the same values and interest, it's members know each other and interact with each other. Due to same habitat they share common norms, values and Social institute.

Characteristics of Community

Community is group of people
Sharing same geographical area
Having good communication with each other
Sharing common culture, feeling, language, attitude value Norms, social interaction.
Sharing common life style.

Community Health Nursing

Definition

Community Health Nursing is a field of nursing that focuses on the health care of individuals, families, and groups within a community. Its goal is to promote and protect the health of the population by identifying health needs, preventing illness, and providing care in settings outside of hospitals, such as homes, schools, and community clinics.
"Community health nursing is the practice of nursing that combines public health and nursing science to provide care and improve the health of people in their communities."

Public Health

Definitions

"The science and art of preventing disease prolonging life and promoting health and efficiency through organized Community efforts".
"The process of mobilizing and engaging local, states, National and International resources to assures the conditions in which people can be healthy".-The Oxford test book of public health

Different between public health Nursing and community health Nursing

Aspect	Community Health Nursing	Public Health Nursing
Definition	A field of nursing that focuses on the health care of individuals, families, and groups in a community setting.	A nursing specialty focused on promoting and protecting the health of populations using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences.
Scope	Individuals, families, and specific groups within a community.	Entire populations or communities.
Approach	More individualized care within the context of the community	Population-based approach with emphasis on prevention and health promotion.
Focus	Curative, preventive, promotive, and rehabilitative care.	Primarily preventive and promotive care.
Setting	Homes, schools, clinics, community centers.	Government and public health departments, policy-making bodies, and public institutions.
Goal	Improve the health of individuals and families within a community.	Prevent disease and promote health on a broader, population-wide scale.
Activities	Home visits, health education, immunizations, basic treatment.	Disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, policy development, community-wide education.
Collaboration	Works with families, local agencies, and community leaders.	Works with government bodies, NGOs, and public health professionals.

Scope of Community Health Nursing

There are many roles and functions of community health nurse in a community area. Role and responsibilities are dependent upon the type of area, position held by the community health nurse, political and legal aspects of that particular area. Some of the roles and functions are discussed here.

Care provider
Researcher
Collaborator
Leadership role
Controller and evaluator
Direction and coordination
Organizer
Planner
Change agent
Advisor
Advocator
Educator
Observer

1. Care provider-The basic function of a nurse is to provide care. This is a basic perception of all member of society. Nurses are giving care to sick person at hospital but in community areas nurses not only providing care to individual but to the whole family. She assessed the family, recognize the problem, makes priority list and giving care according to it.

2. Researcher-The community health nurse can conduct various researches in community area. She involves in planning, Implementation, analysis of various things in community area.

Community can involve in various data collection process because a nurse having first contact with people in community So, this is an easy task for a community health nurse to collect the data.

3. Collaborator-A nurse should be a good collaborator. A community Health nurse cannot achieve the health of people alone. Health is always achieved by multisectoral Approach. Nurse should be good collaborator so that she could collaborate with different departments to achieve the health of community people.

4. Leadership Role-Community health nurse plays a role of leader when she have to manage the things. She leads the groups, providing them guidance, supervision and maintain the coordination between group. Community health nurse plays role of leader in the community.

5. Controller and Evaluator-A nurse plays a role of both controller and evaluator. All the health program Implemented in the community are controlled and evaluate by community nurse seeing the things are proceeded in right direction or not. The objectives of program are met or not. If any wrong things are done that should be controlled, the evaluation is also done by evaluating the results of things as an evaluator by community health nurse.

6. Direction and Coordination-A community health nurse has to act like a director. She is not only involve in making plan but also actively participate in the implementation and execution of the things. She resolves conflict, prevent overlapping of work. Giving direction, make them focus according to objective and material towards achieving the goals. Coordination between the group is important to get the results faster so she acts as a bridge between the group people to maintain a good coordination.

7. Organizer-A nurse is a good organizer. This is one of the most important quality of management Planning of things nothing without proper executions of things. After planning organization of structure is done for achieving the goals and objective. She divides the work according to all the member of group. She arranges all the things that is needed for execution. She assign tasks and took for the smooth working of things in order to achieve goals.

8. Planner-Planning is the most important function of any organization. Community health nurse act as a planner. She firstly assesses the requirement of things and then assess various requirement of a community and then make a priority list and then planning the things accordingly.

9. Change Agent-Community health nurse serves as a catalyst. It means she help other to develop their capabilities. Cope with their health problem provide care to themselves. When the members of family are not able to help themselves and are not able to provide services to their family then a nurse provide care to them.

10.Advisor-A CHN acts as an advisor in a family. Community suffered from so many things and having confusion about many things. Here a nurse acts as an adviser, resolve their conflict on various health issues.

11.Advocator-A nurse acts as an advocator between community. She speaks for their rights. Sometime community people are not aware about various health schemes. Sometime their is no one in family who can speak for their rights. Here a CHN will further help people by improving their knowledge about various health programs and also by speaking for their rights.

12. Educator-Community Health Nursing act like an educator. Teaching and training is the basic task of nurse. They educate individual and family about various things. Many issues can resolve through the health education. Education can be planned or structured and various teaching methods are adopted to provide health education to the people according to their understanding level.

13.Observer-Observation skills are most important skills. The whole process of nursing care depends upon the observation. Observing right things at right time is very important like:

Observation of various health issues in a community
Observation of environmental condition of community
Observation of the lifestyle of people
Observation of environmental condition with respect to physical, biological and psychosocial aspects.