Functions of community health nurse | CHAPTER 1 | Community Health Nursing

Functions of community health nurse – This book covers the entire syllabus of “Community Health Nursing” prescribed by the Universities of Bangladesh- for Basic and diploma nursing students. We tried to accommodate latest information and topics.

This book is examination friendly setup according to the teachers’ lectures and examination’s questions. At the end of the book previous university questions are given. We hope in touch with the book students’ knowledge will be upgraded and flourished. The unique way of presentation may make your reading of the book a pleasurable experience.

Functions of community health nurse

Functions of community health nurse

In general, the community health nurse performs the following functions according to her roles, as follows:

• She provides a continuous and comprehensive are to the family, group of people and community at large.
• She emphasizes more on promotive and preventive health care.
• The community health nurse approaches the family and persuades them to implement promotive and preventive measures.
• Care during illness is beneficial gaining acceptance, trust and confidence.
• She also provides care during illness for which usually the family members come forward to seek help.
• As care is given the nurse educates and helps the family members to develop their abilities and overcome their barriers so that they can take care of their health and nursing needs, promote their health and prevent illness.
• The community health nurse educates the individual, family, groups of people and the community at large.
• Health education thus given focuses on promoting health, preventing illness and aspects related to care during illness and rehabilitation & disability prevention.
• The nurse conducts planned health education sessions for organized community groups e.g., school children, antenatal mothers, eligible couples, elderly etc.
• Health education for the family is planned and implemented as part of the family care plan. The community health nurses is involved in giving incidental/casual/spontaneous health education according to the situation. (washing of hands before a child eats)
• The community health nurse helps individual, families and the community at large to recognize and understand their problems to be solved, find solutions with-in resources and implement feasible and acceptable solutions.

• The community health nurse explores community resources in terms of money, manpower, material, agencies etc.
• She makes use of these resources in helping individual, family groups and community to meet their health and nursing needs.
• The community health nurse makes observations of any untoward change in health behaviour and health status of the community, people, their surroundings, unusual occurrence of disease & take action accordingly.,
• Providing information, health education to people to improve their behaviour and health status, working with the family and providing direct care during illness, notification to health authority about communicable disease.
• The community health gives some suggestions on practical situation which requires immediate actions and where there is little scope of health education.
• The community health nurse while giving comprehensive care to family and community makes a plan on the basis of identified health problems and health & nursing needs.
• The community health nurse implements the care which is planned for the family and community. She directly provides the care with the active participation of family and community members.
• She makes use of family and community resources.
• She guides the family and community and refers when required. She maintains a record of the care given to families and the community.
• The community health nurse evaluates the effectiveness of care given in terms of change in health status, health behaviour, reduction in illness, improvement in clinic attendance- immunization & rate of utilization of the community health services.
• Community health nurse assists the physician and co- ordinates with the other team members in the community health care team in rendering community health services.
• She obtains orders from the physician and explains it clearly to the clients, families, helps and guides them to carry on medical treatment at home.

Or (another answer)

Functions of a community health nurse

The functions of a community health nurse have been classified broadly under the following heads:

1. Care providing
2. Administration/Supervision
3. Communication
4. Nursing
5. Teaching
6. Research

Care providing: The nurse is health care provider, taking care of the sick people at home or in the community clinic

Administration: The nurse is responsible for the day to-day duty assignment of the nursing staff and supervision of these personnel. She provides direction and leadership to those whom she supervises. She is responsible for planning, implementation and evaluation within the primary health center and its associated sub-centers.

Communication: This involves ability to maintain good working relationship with members of the health team, related agencies and the community. She is a link between the patient, the family and the doctor. She participates in the staff and community meetings.

Nursing: She provides “comprehensive nursing care” to individuals and families. This includes family care of the pregnant woman, before, at the time of and after delivery, care of the newborn, the premature, the infant, toddler, the school child, applied nutrition and family planning.

Teaching: Knowledge and skills of methods of individual and group teaching: preparation and use of simple teaching aids; training of dais: participation in student training programme, if any,

Research: There is probably far more research relevant to nursing than nurses realize. A good deal of knowledge derived from sociology and psychology is relevant to public health nursing, viz. infant feeding and weaning, mother and child relation, nursing needs and practices in the community, utilization of the existing nursing services, job analysis of nursing personnel in the health team etc.

The duties of a community health nurse include

• Educating the public.
• Conducting patient evaluations.
• Administering care.
• Providing referrals.
• Directing patients to support services.
• Visiting patients at home.

See More: 

• Community Health Nursing | Diploma in Nursing Science and Midwifery