Role Of Community Health Nursing

ROLE OF COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSING

Seven major roles are:

• Clinician 
• Educator 
• Advocate 
• Manager
• Collaborator
• Leader
• Researcher

The most familiar community health nurse role is that of clinician or provider of care. However, giving nursing care takes on new meaning in the context of community health.

A. Clinician role 

                    It is direct care provider

The clinician role in the community health means that the nurse ensures that health services are provided, not just to individuals and families but also to groups and population. For community health nurses the clinician role involves certain emphasis different from basic nursing, i.e. – Holism, health promotion, and skill expansion.

Holism:
    in community health, however, a holistic approach means considering the broad range of interacting needs that affect the collective health of the client as a larger system. The client is a composite of people whose relationships and interactions with each other must be considered in totality. 

Health Promotion focus on wellness:
         The community health nurse provides service along the entire range of the wellness – illness continuum but especially emphasis on promotion of health and prevention of illness. 

Expanded skills:
            the nurse uses many different skills in the community health clinician role skill. In addition to physical care skill, recently skills in observation, listening, communication and counseling became integral to the clinician role with an increased emphasis on environmental and community wide considerations such as problems with pollution, violence and crime, drug abuse, unemployment and limited funding for health programs.  

B. Educator role
               It is widely recognized that health teaching is a part of good nursing practice and one of the major functions of a community health nurse (Brown, 1988). The educator role is especially useful in promoting the public’s health for at least two reasons. The educator role:

- Has the potential for finding greater receptivity and providing higher yield results.- Is significant because wider audience can be reached. The emphases throughout the health teaching process continue to be placed on illness prevention and health promotion.  

C. Advocate role
          The issue of clients’ rights is important in health care today. Every patient or client has the right to receive just equal and humane treatment. However, our present health care system is often characterized by fragmented and depersonalized services. This approach particularly affected the poor and the disadvantaged. The community health nurse often must act as advocate for clients pleading the cause or acting on behalf of the client group. There are times when health care clients need some one to explain what services to expect and which services they ought to receive.

D. Manager role
               As a manager the nurse exercises administrative direction towards the accomplishment of specified goals by assessing clients’ needs, planning and organizing to meet those needs, directing and controlling and evaluating the progress to assure that goals are met. Nurses serve as managers when they oversee client care, supervise ancillary staff, do case management, manage caseloads, run clinics or conduct community health needs assessment projects.

E. Case management
              Case management refers to a systematic process by which the nurse assesses clients’ needs, plans for and co-ordinates services, refers to other appropriate providers, and monitors and evaluates progress to ensure that clients multiple service needs are meet

F. Collaborator role
               Community health nurses seldom practice in isolation. They must work with many people including clients, other nurses, physicians, social workers and community leaders, therapists, nutritionists, occupational therapists, psychologists, epidemiologists, biostaticians, legislators, etc. as a member of the health team (Fairly 1993, Williams, 1986). The community health nurse assumes the role of collaborator, which means to work jointly in a common endeavor, to co-operate as partners.

G. Leader role
             Community health nurses are becoming increasingly active in the leader role. As a leader, the nurse directs, influences, or persuades others to effect change that will positively affect people’s health. The leadership role’s primary function is to effect change; thus, the community health nurse becomes an agent of change. They also seek to influence people to think and behave differently about their health and the factors contributing to it.

H. Research role
               In the researcher role community health nurses engage in systematic investigation, collection and analysis of data for the purpose of solving problems and enhancing community health practice. Research literally means to search and/or to  investigate, discover, and interpret facts. All researches in community health from the simplest inquiry to the most epidemiological study uses the same fundamental process.
              

The research process involves the following steps:

Identifying an area of interestSpecify the research question or statementReview of literatureIdentifying the conceptual frame workSelect research designCollect and analyze dataInterpret the resultCommunicate the findings

The community health nurse identifies a problem or question, investigates by collecting and analyzing data, suggests and evaluates possible solutions and selects and or rejects all solutions and starts the investigative process over again. In one sense, the nurse in gathering data for health planning, investigates health problems in order to design wellness – promoting and disease prevention for the community.