Fall of my Senior year was when I took this course. This course taught me everything I needed to know about caring for an entire community, as a nurse. Just when I think I have a handle on how to think and act as a nurse, the nursing department had to throw another curve ball at me. Just when I was getting comfortable caring for numerous patients, they showed me how nurses are even expected to holistically care for entire communities.
Community nursing requires one to change their perspective of nursing. Instead of caring for one individual patient, you are required to care for the health of an entire community. Geographical boundaries have no discerning property of communities. Communities are groups of individuals who share the same values, characteristics, and beliefs. Nurse are expected to assess the needs of a community by collecting data from the local hospitals, health departments, clinics, and first aid centers in order to adequately determine the needs of that community. Once they acquire enough information, they will then designate priority actions that must be completed. With the help of local partnerships from health departments, school systems, radio and TV stations, clinics, and even volunteers, community health nurses are able to create and enact change within their community. They have the ability to help prevent conditions from ever occurring, assist the current population screen for certain conditions, and even provide appropriate resources to those who require additional services.
Community health nurses must also be educated about government policies, laws, regulations, funding, and even data interpretation techniques in order to be sufficient in their jobs. To appropriately allocate the resources to their community, they need to be able to understand how the government spends their money, how the community typically raises and spends money, and how federal and local laws affect the community’s health decisions. Community health nursing is forever assessing the current political climate of their current community, and the communities surrounding them.