Table of Contents
Health is one of the determinants of a productive population. A healthy community is one in which the members are in constant interaction with the environment. The observations of environmental norms make it a haven for the human stay. The community and public health professionals provide community-based services to improve the health of different populations. While answering the questions, this paper explains the impact of community and public health.
Community Health and Public Health Nursing
According to the Mengistu and Misganaw (2006), community health nursing refers to a combination of nursing and public health practice aimed at the protection and promotion of a population’s health. It uses the essential elements of clinical nursing incorporated in public health. On the other hand, public health nursing is a specialty practice within the nursing and public health cadres whose focus is on the improvement of population health with a critical emphasis on primary prevention (American Nurses Association, 2013; Thatcher & Park, 2012). They are interrelated as they both deal with the health of people aiming at wellness. Besides, they revolve around the promotion of health care.
Impact of Health Care Change
While health professional expertise and obligation are required in change, the setting of health care plays a crucial role. For instance, Kreitzer (n.d.) points out that the switch to a patient-centred and holistic model improved on patient outcomes in addition to the boosting of clinicians' effectiveness and efficiency. The model supports the nurse-patient interaction in which the patient benefits from health education. The involvement of the patient’s family and the clinicians’ integration of complementary and alternative practices into conventional care have led to a positive impact on the health of a population (Kreitzer, n.d.). The change has helped medical administrators in meeting safety goals such as a reduction in medical errors along the improvement of patient satisfaction and increase in financial performance (Kreitzer, n.d.). It shows that the change in health care is advantageous to the community.
Health
A community is a group of individuals with common characteristics of identity such as a location, shared interests, and experiences (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015). A population is a group of people who are not organized and lack an identity. Health, on the other hand, is a dynamic state of a person that is multi-dimensional and not the mere absence of disease (McKenzie & Pinger., 2015). Given the definition, the health of an individual is determined by various factors in constant interaction. This perspective may lead to partial health provision since some percentile of sickness characterizes wellness. Also, the care provider may place emphasis on the various domains of wellness without addressing the illness cause.
Influencers in Community Health
According to McKenzie and Pinger (2015), factors influencing people's health are physical factors and social and cultural factors. The geography of a place controls the altitude, latitude and the climate of a location. These alter the temperatures of an area which predispose to disease and poor soil conditions that lead to inadequate food. The environment also affects man’s health. Its sustainability is a direct correlate of the human population whereby an exponential increase may result in a depletion of non-renewable natural resources that predisposes to communicable diseases. Social-cultural factors such as religion, beliefs and traditions of a community influence the uptake of given services such as immunization and address of moral and ethical issues.
This paper has explained the various definitions in public and community health nursing. The community is a group of people with an identity in contrast to a population without an identity. The setting of health care change in the previous decade has led to the improvement in the quality of health care through the patient-centered model. The definition of disease as not merely the absence of illness influences on the intervention level of the clinician to a patient. A healthy community or population is affected by social-cultural and physical factors. This paper has addressed the various factors regarding health in any society.