Community Health Nursing

Community Health Nursing

Introduction

The nature of community practice is broad and covers many aspects, is not confined to one age group or a specific diagnosis. The community nurse's work is mainly based on problem identification and planning of activities of health promotion, disease prevention, and development of educational activities, prioritizing identified vulnerable groups, families or individuals and using all available resources in the family system to meet the needs of society as providers. Community Nurses work in various fields, with a diverse patient population. There are many nurses working in different units of hospitals including the intensive care, postoperative care and high dependency units. They also work on medical evacuation and transportation teams. In fact, nurses have exposure of many working areas and they prepare care plans concerning different factors (Helen, 2007).

The nursing profession which is patient-centered, is a practice with a strong humanistic connotation these relate to their origin, history, evolution and social customs to understand the disease. Community nursing, in its current conception, is a reflection of the transformations that the concept of health has suffered over the years. The staff of healthcare institute should have a consistent performance in the current context with important contributions to the health of the population, a fact which distinguishes it as a promoter of human development, which produces not only health care but also values; qualities that go towards improving the health of people (Anderson, 2008).

Case of Afghan Community Member

The case taken in this essay is based on 56 year old lady, Mrs. Karzai, whose origin is Afghanistan and lives in Shepparton Victoria in Australia. Mrs. Karzai was suffering with carcinoma and recently got it removed after sigmoid colectomy - a surgical process. The carcinoma can be defined as malignant cancer that occurs through the cells in the endodermal layer during embryogenesis. In other words, carcinoma is a tumour tissue that depicts all abnormal properties of malignancy. In addition, Carcinoma can affect the body from inside as well as outside with sever impacts on skin, lungs, or intestine. It is also important to know that percentage of carcinoma in cancer is almost 80%, which can begin everywhere in the body of patient. This tumour is usually diagnosed through biopsy. Sigmoid colectomy, on the other hand, can be defined as a surgical procedure to take the carcinoma out by removing the left side of the colon, which is located on the left side of the abdomen as shown in Figure-1.

The case, taken into account shows that a 56 year old lady - Mrs. Karzai, who belongs to Afghan community has recently got her surgical procedure to remove carcinoma of the bowel. In this case, it can be seen that Mrs. Karzai was hospitalized for this treatment and discharged after the successful procedure. On the other hand, it is also important to know that she is using different traditional medicines in order to manage her health. Similarly it is also important to consider that ...