Community Health Services For Patients

RUNNING HEAD: community health services for patients inflicted with HIV/AIDS
Community Nursing Practice
Student name and number
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Community health services for patients inflicted with HIV/AIDS
Table of Contents
Criterion 1..................................................................................................................................3
HIV and its impact on individual, family, and community....................................................3
The role played by community nurses and primary healthcare services...............................4
Criterion 2..................................................................................................................................6
Interventions used to promote and protect the HIV population.............................................6
Interventions used by community nurses:..............................................................................7
References................................................................................................................................10
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Community health services for patients inflicted with HIV/AIDS
Criterion 1
The criterion considered in this part of the paper is the impact of HIV on family,
community members and very individual who has been grappling with the disease. The
criterion majorly emphasizes on community nursing practice and the use of primary
healthcare to promote as well as protect the people, who are prone to the risk of HIV or are
having HIV.
HIV and its impact on individual, family, and community
According to statistics, 963 cases of new HIV have been detected in Australia in the
year 2017, which is the lowest since 2010. Also, this reflects a 7% decline in the last five
years. One of the major reasons behind HIV in Australia is male to male sex as well as
injecting drug use apart from heterosexual sex (King, McGregor, McManus, Gray, & Guy,
2018).
HIV is now known for many decades and these diseases remains the most dreadful
and most feared diseases among people. The major reason behind this is that HIV is a disease
that is not limited to a single individual rather it affects the families as well as communities in
which the patient resides. Family of HIV patient is affected in many different manners like, if
they have poor access to information then it may lead to delayed medication or even may
think that revealing about the disease may bring disgrace to their family and society may not
accept them. This will in turn affect the treatment of an individual. Having said that, it has
been seen that many family members suffer from mental illness because of the anxiety and
depression that they have to live with a person who is HIV positive. This problem is further
aggravated when there is a conflict between the religious and cultural beliefs regarding HIV’s
medication. If a child is detected HIV positive, then the family face difficulty in deciding
when and how to disclose this to him/her and how to make him/her understand the
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Community health services for patients inflicted with HIV/AIDS
precautions that he/she needs to take in order to promote their health as well as protect the
health of others (American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, 2019).
The role played by community nurses and primary healthcare services
Community nurses play a very important role in providing the social as well as mental
support to the individuals who are suffering through HIV as well as to their family and
communities (Simon, et al., 2016). Their main aim is to identify the health problems
prevailing in a community and then providing them with the necessary healthcare support as
well as financial support if required for their treatment (Australian Primary Health Care
Nurses Association (APNA), 2017). The community nurses develop many intervention plans
in order to deal with the issues being faced by the patient and also educate them properly
about the disease so that their health can be assured. Apart from this, the community nurses
also try to educate the family and community members about the necessary prevention
techniques for better treatment of the patient (Everynurse, 2019).
Some of the most important services that are rendered by community nurses include
providing extended care to patients after their stay in hospital. They also offer hospital in-
home services which aim at giving hospital-like care at home (Escoffery, et al., 2019).
Community nurses also offer general nursing care in the cases of chronic conditions. Hence,
in all, it can be said that community nursing tries to maintain the independence of the patients
and provide them with the healthy lifestyle so that they can recover speedily (Health Direct,
2019).
According to Adeny and others (2013), it is believed that HIV services with primary
healthcare services will help to a great extent in health promotion of HIV patients. It has been
monitored that community nurses can provide primary healthcare services to the patients and
protect them as well as their families and community from the adverse impact of HIV. One of
the most important benefits of primary healthcare service rendered by community nurses is
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