Introduction - Characteristics of Community Health Nursing

 COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSING

Community health nursing is a synthesis of nursing and public health practice applied to promoting and preserving the health of populations.

• Treat “ Population as a Whole”

• Focus on individual, family, groups, community

• Utilizing Health promotion, health maintenance, health education, and management, coordination, and continuity of care for meeting population needs. 

Goals of Community Health Nursing

The goals of CHN categorized as health promotion, health maintenance, prevention of illness and restoration of health.

1. Health Promotion:

It assumes that patient have a higher potential of health than they realize. Health promotion is to increase the level of understanding and the expectations of families, groups and communities to cope with health and illness problems. 

It includes, modifying or changing health practices, increasing health knowledge and developing understanding of normal growth and development.

2. Health Maintenance:

Nurses in the community work with many patients who are well but need to improve to maintain their level of wellness. Health maintenance involves the thorough and continuous assessment of both individual and community to ensure that they continue to function at the same level.

It includes to maintain the family as a group handling the problems. Therapeutic nursing services help in the time of crisis such as illness, birth or hospitalization and coordination of health and nursing services.

3. Prevention of Illness:

It is the avoidance of changes in the health status that are harmful to the patient. It encompasses increasing knowledge about preventive measures in relation to specific disease such as special diets, self examination of breast, and importance of taking vaccines. 

For example: to maintain and increase level of immunization in the family to prevent occurrence or recurrence of diseases or illness. 

4. Restoration of Health:

It means to help patient returning to an optimum state of health and wellbeing, recovering to as great an extent as possible, whatever health functioning has been lost. 

Characteristics of Community Health Nursing 

• It is a field of nursing

• It combines public health and nursing

• It focus in population and environment factors that may impact to people’s health

• It emphasize in health promotion, illness prevention, and wellness

• It promotes client responsibility and self-care

• It uses aggregate measurement and analysis

• It use principle of organizational theory 

• It involves inter-professional collaboration.

Introduction -  Characteristics of Community Health Nursing | POST RN BSN NURSING RESOURCES