Nursing in Partnership with Faith Based Parish Nurses - Research Paper Example

Nursing in Partnership with Faith Based Parish Nurses Faith based communities consider health a vital ingredient in continuity of their faith. Therefore, healthy human beings must reconsider their concentration on their faith and other activities that strengthen their faith. In most cases, the faith based communities consider providing better health care facilities to the people that would wish to join their faith. The core reason of this approach is to ensure the believers are not distracted from their activities (Hickman, 2011). Healthy people are more likely to be focused on their faith at all times, which strengthens the community as their faith is not jeopardized. For instance, a healthy person will not feel any ailments. However, an ailing person will not have the mindset of holding on to his/her faith constantly. This reduces the commitment of the believers in their faith. Under such circumstances, providing healing is the appropriate approach. The heritage of health and healing in the faith based communities is instigated to provide care for the underprivileged. There are some people in the world that are underprivileged and do not have avenues of attaining better health. Since their faith and beliefs state that they should help the underprivileged, they have an obligation to do so. In many instances, faith based communities will find better ways of helping the underprivileged in the society at all costs. This is an approach that strengthens both their faith and activities in helping the society (King, 2007). Apparently, many faith based communities consider this their obligation as stated by their faith. With such activities, they are able t accomplish their obligations without jeopardizing their faith. The faith based communities have to strengthen the beliefs of their community members. As such they have to find a way of proving to the other communities that their faith is steadfast. In proving continuity of their faith, they have to participate in some activities that are realized by the community members. Many faith based communities achieve this by providing healing to some people within the community. This helps in proving their faith and beliefs as unfaltering. Nursing is a profession that requires amassed human resources. Therefore, a larger number of professionals working in the sector will have a positive impact on the provision of the services (Solari-Twadell and McDermott, 2006). In essence, for many professionals working for a universal goal, this will be a prudent approach in giving high quality services. In the recent past, the nursing profession has been facing several challenges which include a limited number of professionals. This has adversely affected service provision in the nursing profession as they are unable to serve all the people that need their services. This has been a looming drawback to the nursing profession as they are not able to provide adequate health care services. To rectify such a situation, the faith based communities prefer to help by partnering with community nurses. This creates a scenario where the people offering the services are in large numbers. As such, the nursing sector has a large number of people that offer services to people that need them. The quality of services is improved when community nurses partner with parish nurses. The parish nurses are guided with their faith and beliefs in the profession. With such, the people that need the services are treated with the best care and health services. This is a benefit to the society as it gets the best care and health services. Partnership between community nurses and parish nurses helps in reducing the instances of stigmatization. This is especially helpful to the underprivileged people of the society. In any society, there are some people that can afford paying for the services they need. On the other hand, some people do not have this opportunity and can hardly pay for medical services. As such, they will forego some services, which at times include health services. This causes a drift in the society where some people are stigmatized. Therefore, partnering with parish nurses helps improve the situation (Hickman, 2011). As such, the underprivileged will not feel isolated. This reduces any chances of stigma against the underprivileged people who do not afford for such service. Parish nurses have an important role to play in their partnership with community nurses. To begin with, the parish nurses’ core reason to engage in such partnership is to help the community. Therefore, they have to provide relentless efforts in ensuring the community gains access to all the services they need this is by offering any help the community and other nurses need. As such, they will be able to offer help by offering health care services. They will also get to an extent of ensuring the people that need these services are fed at the appropriate times. With such services, the patients feel they are cared for and will recuperate in the meanest times. This provides the community with high quality health services that could not be accessed in any other place. Under such circumstances, the community will have access to healthy living and there will be fewer cases of unhealthy living (Solari-Twadell and McDermott, 2006). Therefore, the nurses ensure the community is accessing high quality health care services at all times. Faith based communities have to maintain their faith and strengthen their system of beliefs. This extends to the parish nurses who have a role in strengthening their faith. As such, the nurses have an important role of maintaining the faith of their community at all times. This is an indulging task that is based on their activities, interaction and in their service provision. This means that the parish nurses have to consider the faith while serving the community. They have to ensure they do not jeopardize their faith while serving the community. This would be a setback to the community if they jeopardize their faith while in serving the community. In addition to this, the parish nurses have to instill faith in the people they serve (King, 2007). This is an extension of their faith to other people that would be instrumental in the community. Many believers have a feeling that they should increase the number of people that believe in their faith. Therefore, the parish nurses have to ensure there is an increase in the number of people that believe in their faith. Similarly, the parish nurses have a role to play in coaxing the people that need the services to believe in healing. When the patients have faith in healing, they are likely t have better health. There are several legal and ethical issues that have been highlighted within the framework of partnership between community nurses and parish nurses (O'Brien, 2003). This has been prevalent in many communities that offer such services to the society. To begin with, there is an issue that is exposed in regard to communities that are not believers. Some communities are inclined to various religious affiliations which have different faith and beliefs. This is an issue that affects the service provision as they are affected in one way or another. For instance, people that do not have faith in healing are not likely to heal after receiving services from parish nurses. This jeopardizes the parish nurses’ involvement in health care service provision. The second issue that emanates is that there are some ethical issues that are observed in the nursing profession and are not compatible with the faith and beliefs of the parish nurses (Solari-Twadell and McDermott, 2006). This is an issue that affects the involvement of parish nurses in healing. For instance, parish nurses believe that every person has the right for truthful information. However, some nursing practices state that telling a patient the truth could deteriorate the situation. Under such circumstances, the parish nurses might not offer the best quality services, since they are often torn between their faith and professional ethos. References Hickman, J. S. (2011). Fast facts for the faith community nurse: Implementing FCN/parish nursing in a nutshell. New York: Springer Publishing Company. King, M. A. (2007). The experience of choosing the parish nurse for health care services. California: ProQuest. O'Brien, M. E. (2003). Parish nursing: Healthcare ministry within the church. New York: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Solari-Twadell, P. A., & McDermott, M. A. (2006). Parish nursing: Development, education, and administration. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences. Read More