Nurses’ Levels of Engagement in Communities
Nurse engagement is the collaboration of nurses from the same geographical area who are interested in solving health issues affecting the community. It can be engaged in solving issues like health, research, and others. According to the World Health Organization (2020), nurses are essential to the community. Levels of engagements that nurses provide in communities include promoting health, improving service design and quality of care, and determining the needs of people in communities.
Nurse’s level of engagement in a community includes the promotion of health among people. Technology advancement nowadays significantly impacts nursing careers since it equips them with more skills and knowledge. The skills and knowledge obtained can be used in solving health problems in a community. This level of engagement makes nurses good promoters of health in a community for ensuring healthier community members. According to Eastern Michigan University (2022), nurses teach diabetes education classes at the university level. This level of nurse engagement in a community is essential because it helps determine good health programs to be implemented in society.
The second level of nurse engagement is improving service design and quality of care in a community. Nurses use different approaches to address different issues affecting a patient or entire society. Nurses care for people with different problems; therefore, they should be able to provide quality care to accommodate all their patients. Nurses ensure quality care by aligning with social policy advocacy to improve the health of the marginalized people in a community (Williams et al., 2018). The disadvantaged community members have access to better health services; nurses participate in designing programs responsible for this change ensuring equality. The level of improving health care services to patients in society through nurse engagement has benefited all members of a community.
Determining the needs of people is part of nurse engagement in a community. Nurses take primary responsibility as an advocate besides their nursing profession. They identify the needs of people in a community and advocate for proper strategies to address any issue affecting the community at large (Kulbok et al., 2012). Showing alternative methods to a patient who cannot access what a nurse recommends is part of nurse engagement, for example, the diabetic person who cannot afford a proper diet is advised to participate in regular physical exercise which helps in the reduction of high blood sugar in the body. The level of nurse engagement where they can determine people’s needs enables them to find the appropriate approach to solve the problem.
Nurse engagement involves a collaboration of nurses whose main aim is to promote health in a community. They are engaged in a community by participating in the following ways: promoting health, designing appropriate services and quality care, and identifying people’s needs. These primary responsibilities of nurses aim to improve community members’ health and benefit everyone.
References
Eastern Michigan University. (2022, 20). What is the role of nurses in the community? EMU Online. https://online.emich.edu/degrees/healthcare/rn-to-bsn/role-of-nurses-in-community/
Kulbok, P., Thatcher, E., Park, E., & Meszaros, P. (2012). Evolving public health nursing roles: Focus on community participatory health promotion and prevention. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.3912/ojin.vol17no02man01
Williams, S., Phillips, J., & Koyama, K. (2018). Nurse advocacy: Adopting health in all policies approach. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.3912/ojin.vol23no03man01
World Health Organization. (2020, October 5). Community engagement: A health promotion guide for universal health coverage in the hands of the people. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240010529
