Challenges and benefits for community health nurses - Essay Example

Challenges and Benefits of Community Health Nurses al Affiliation Challenges and Benefits for Community Health Nurses The nursing practice is one of the practices that play a significant role in the social wellbeing of the modern society. In most cases, community nurses are required to ensure and provide healthcare to the community particularly to the part of the population that cannot access basic healthcare needs from healthcare institutions due to various reasons. Some of the major benefits of community health nurses is such nurses have greater interaction levels with the general community.

This places community nurses in the best position to identify major disease outbreaks in the community hence proactive as opposed to reactive measures can be applied to respond to the outbreak. In addition, community nurses educate the general community regarding various diseases, how to prevent them and how to live healthy while suffering from certain diseases. According to Savage et al. (2006) this is because, most people in the community lack the information on how to address the various diseases that affect them.

However, community nurses often have various challenges with regards to how they carry basic operations in the job description. One of the main challenges that community nurses face is the exposure to infectious diseases in the course of their work. Community nurses provide healthcare in all social settings including the community, churches, schools and even the homeless. In addition, community nurses address complex health problems including delivering healthcare to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Under such circumstances, there is no guarantee as to whether the nurses will be infected with infectious diseases. In addition, various protective measures to prevent such an occurrence are not adequate to address the health safety of community nurses. Community nurses also face the challenge of an unresponsive society. Some communities have strong cultural and religious beliefs that affect their attitude and perceptions regarding the healthcare services. Convincing such people in the community on the importance of accessing healthcare services is a huge challenge for community nurses.

ReferenceSavage, C. L., Xu, Y., Lee, R., Rose, B. L., Kappesser, M., & Anthony, J. S. (2006). A Case Study in the Use of Community‐Based Participatory Research in Public Health Nursing. Public Health Nursing, 23(5), 472-478.