Community health nurses: Nursing

Community health nursing is a branch of nursing focused on the health and wellbeing of communities. A community is a group of people who live in the same area or share certain experiences, values or characteristics.

Examples of communities include specific locations like a town or neighborhood, a family or group of neighbors, a sports team or a religious group.

Nurses can support communities by providing home health, hospice and palliative care. Ok.

So nurses who work in public health departments, visiting nurse associations, home health agencies, hospice agencies or schools may provide care for patients and families in their homes.

Home health allows patients to retain as much independence as possible while receiving needed health care wherever they reside, which could be a family home group facility, hotel or temporary shelter.

Now the services home health care nurses provide will depend on the type of agency they work for the community they serve and the individual patients needs.

Direct care services can include wound dressing changes, assisting with activities of daily living, administering medications or tube feedings and assisting patients to transition from inpatient care to their home.

Home health nurses can also assist with prevention strategies like administering vaccinations, screening for risk factors for certain health conditions and monitoring patients for adverse effects of medications.

They may also work with other members of the healthcare team to coordinate patient care to ensure medications are refilled.

Assist with scheduling screening tests or confirm needed physical or occupational therapy sessions have been ordered while providing direct care for the individual patient.

The home health nurse will also assess the patient family relationship, communication patterns and methods of coping while providing education for the patient and their family.

Other activities can include ensuring quality care by participating in performance improvement initiatives and using current research to plan and evaluate care.

Now, nurses also provide hospice and palliative care in a patient's home as well as in a variety of other settings such as long term care facilities, dedicated hospice facilities and acute care centers.

Hospice care is provided for patients at end of life where care shifts from curative care to comfort care. For instance, when a patient is in the terminal phase of illness and has a life expectancy of six months or less, the patient could be admitted to hospice to receive care during the dying process or the patient's physical, emotional and spiritual needs are addressed.

On the other hand, palliative care is focused on providing relief from pain and suffering while the patient continues to receive prescribed treatments for life threatening illnesses or when their life expectancy is more than six months.

For example, while a patient is receiving chemotherapy treatments for cancer. They can receive palliative care to address the effects of the cancer on their body.

As well as the adverse effects of the chemotherapy hospice and palliative care are focused on symptom management like pain, nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, fatigue and decreased appetite.

For instance, the nurse will regularly assess and treat pain with pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions and manage fatigue by encouraging frequent rest periods and providing nutritional support.

Hospice and palliative care also involves education and emotional support for patients and their families. Interventions can include helping patients to process emotions like fear and anxiety, assisting family members to adjust to the patient's impending death, providing education on the physical symptoms.

The patient is likely to experience and referring the family to a bereavement support group following the death of their loved one.

Lastly, nurses who provide hospice and palliative care coordinate the care provided by an interdisciplinary team of physicians, social workers, spiritual counselors and other health care professionals to ensure the patient receives the supportive care they need.

All right. As a quick recap.

Community health nursing is a branch of nursing focused on the health and wellbeing of communities. Community health nurses provide home health hospice and palliative care.

The services offered can include direct care, assisting with activities of daily living preventative care, symptom, management, education and care coordination.