Context and Roles in Community Nursing Practice

Abstract

This chapter introduces and explores the nature of community nursing roles and the context of community nurses’ work. Practice in the community is diverse, stimulating and challenging. Although community nurses usually work for health agencies, they are often required to be independent practitioners, working and making decisions about their practice alone. The simplest understanding of community nursing is nursing that takes place outside a hospital or institutional setting. Community-based nursing practice focuses on promoting and maintaining the health of individuals and families, preventing and minimising the progression of disease, and improving quality of life. By contrast, community health nursing is a specialty that, in addition to providing care for individuals and families, also focuses on groups, communities and populations. To work effectively in the community, a nurse needs to have a sophisticated grasp of some foundational theoretical concepts and their underpinning philosophies, as well as the issues and debates that surround them.