Community-based nursing refers to the collaboration of healthcare providers with the communities and the populations at large, as equal partners, with the aim of promoting health and preventing diseases. Further, the role of community-based nursing entails collaborating with nurses with the communities, as well as the populations in addressing healthcare and social problems. Community health nurses (CHNs) provide care to groups, individuals, and families at an outside hospital setting with the aim of improving the communities' health outcomes. Community health nurses possess excellent clinical skills and extensive abilities in advocacy, critical thinking, and analysis. Community-based nursing has its primary focus on the population and demands unique competencies, abilities, knowledge, and skills. Further, the practice goes beyond taking care of the sick to encompass health education, advocacy, social reforms, and community organizing. Similarly, the contemporary community-based nursing entails the collaboration of nurses with various agencies, non-governmental organizations and the members of the community in health care promotion activities (Reed & Shearer, 2011). This paper, therefore, explores community-based nursing; what it entails, its importance and its different types.
Importance of Community-Based Nursing.
Community-based nursing developed as a distinctive nursing specialty as a result of the expansion of the scientific knowledge and increased demand for better health conditions from the members of the public. Hence, the role of the community health nurses became indispensable in the provision of preventive health care. Nursing role in the community setting was perceived to be of great importance in achieving the desired healthcare outcomes for the disadvantaged and the vulnerable members of the community (Lundy & Janes, 2003). In the recent past, the community health nurses practice in dissimilar settings that includes, but not limited to, housing developments , community nursing centers, parishes, schools, state and local health departments, and occupational programs in healthcare.