When it comes to community volunteers, nursing professionals rank at the top. When a patient seeks their assistance and support, they act as the guardians of their health, ensuring their safety and well-being. Contributing to a healthy society, they help individuals deal with illness and injuries and teach about health and safety. These health advocates play an essential part in society.
What is Community Nursing?
Community health nursing –which is also known as public health nursing or community nursing, is a speciality that integrates primary nursing care with the delivery of nursing services in a community-based environment. Community health nurses are responsible for providing communities or populations with health care, including preventative care, intervention, and health education.
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Factors that Support the Importance of Nursing in Healthcare
Increasing Health Awareness
Educating people about a range of health issues is an essential part of a nurse's job. The patient receives education from a qualified nurse about healthy food and frequent exercise. This ensures that a patient maintains optimal health and avoids avoidable lifestyle illnesses and problems.
Handling Other Illnesses and Chronic Conditions: Everyone occasionally becomes ill or requires medical care. A nursing professional must provide the patient with the assistance they require when needed. Among a nurse's various duties are bandage changes, wound cleansing, and many more such tasks.
- Providing patients with assistance with activities of daily living such as grooming, bathing, exercising, and clothing
- Administering medicines or treatments as prescribed by a doctor
- Teaching patients and their caretakers about medical conditions and procedures
- Taking vital signs and keeping an eye on their patient’s health
- Updating and keeping up with patient records
- Sterilising medical facilities to stop the transmission of disease
- Assisting medical professionals with their procedures
- Assisting patients and their families with their emotional needs
- Providing services in community health nursing
- Therefore, the support and care given by a nurse cannot be undervalued, regardless of whether a patient is dealing with a severe sickness or simply a minor issue.
Rehabilitation:
The rehabilitation process starts with the patient feeling unwell and fighting the illness. Healthcare nurses can also work as recovery rehabilitators for patients who are ill. They help patients struggle with and manage their illnesses so they can quickly return to their normal lives. They offer all of the resources, training, and therapy required to make the rehabilitation process faster and easier.
Nurses give direct patient care to individuals who are critically ill. They assist the patient in carrying out bodily functions that are essential to their existence. As a result, in addition to keeping an eye on vital signs like blood pressure and oxygen levels, they also assist the patient with daily bodily functions like bathing, dressing, and taking medications.
Providing Health and Safety Information:
As a result of COVID, nurses’ responsibilities have increased. They gave the patients all the knowledge they required so that illnesses and diseases might be prevented at all costs. Additionally, they provide the patients with knowledge of first aid procedures. This means that nurses play a crucial role in the management of the health sector.
Empathy:Â
A nurse's compassion and empathy for a patient raises that person’s spirit. It makes him or her feel optimistic. Everyone understands the importance of maintaining a happy attitude during healing.
Nurses empower patients to tackle their illnesses and ailments head-on, with mental and spiritual strength. Numerous studies have proven that patients' resolve and willpower enable them to overcome their problems and regain health as a result of appropriate nursing care.
Health Care Nurses are Patient’s Advocates:
A patient can use a nurse to communicate anything they wish to the doctor. A patient can put all his or her trust in a nurse. The position of a nurse, in which the patient depends on her or him both physically and emotionally, cannot be disregarded because nursing is a profession that enjoys high levels of trust. In comparison to doctors and even family members, nurses frequently spend more time with patients. Therefore, the patient may communicate any difficulty or problem they are having with the nurse more effectively than with anyone else.
Educating Caretakers:
The patient will continue to have caregivers at home in case something happens. The nurse instructs the caregivers to ensure that nothing goes wrong and that every last detail is taken care of. They offer pertinent details on the patient’s food, schedule, medications, etc.
These are only a few of the factors that show how crucial the role nurses play in our community. The heroes of healthcare today are the nurses. The scope of the nursing profession is rapidly expanding and changing, and nurses are taking on a growing number of essential tasks. A doctor treats a patient, and a nurse makes sure that the doctor’s efforts are not in vain and that the patient is on the road to recovery soon.
What Job Growth Looks Like
The national nursing shortage, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic, will continue to fuel a 9% job growth rate through 2030, according to the UK researcher Statistics. The agency projects employers to add 276,800 RN positions from 2020–to 2030.
Because of these growing needs, becoming a community health nurse has some advantages:
- Creating strong partnerships between nurses and clients and/or the community population
- Enjoying collaborative nursing care working with clients in a nonhospital setting
- Having a variety of work settings
- Helping vulnerable communities
- Providing holistic and more individualized care
- Working a convenient schedule with little to no holiday or weekend hours
According to the researchers, community health worker programs particularly need nurses trained in preventing and controlling infectious diseases, to deliver home-based care to low-income people.
What Challenges Remain Ahead
The National Institutes of Health indicates that public nurses face many challenges aside from the day-to-day demands of practice, including:
- Concerns for personal safety
- Frequent overtime
- Inadequate staffing levels
- Limited management support and supervision
- On-call duties
- Professional isolation
- Restricted opportunities for career development
