Nursing Role by Community Nurse

Community nurses are tasked with managing healthcare within the communities rather than hospitals or clinics. By working with different patients and care providers, they support self-management and improvement of various diseases and conditions. Additionally, they educate the patients and care providers on the prevention and control of diseases and conditions. This paper therefore highlights the role of the community nurse in relation to two different patients.

Running head: Nursing Role by Community Nurse 1
Nursing Role by Community Nurse
Community nurses are tasked with managing healthcare within the communities rather
than hospitals or clinics. By working with different patients and care providers, they support self-
management and improvement of various diseases and conditions. Additionally, they educate the
patients and care providers on the prevention and control of diseases and conditions. This paper
therefore highlights the role of the community nurse in relation to two different patients.
Patient 1: Mrs Zoya Solarian
Diabetes patients require multiple healthcare needs as well as holistic approaches in its
management. This requires continuous assessment and provision of care under the community
nurse. According to Egbujie et al. (2018), community health nurses play vital roles in providing
structured education and ongoing support to diabetes patients. In this situation, the role of the
community nurse is to ensure that the patient gets regular doses of the medication as prescribed.
Since the patient is on perindopril 4mg OD dosage to help lower her blood pressure, Actrapid
pen 100units/ml as per sliding scale which should be administered on the exact dose of insulin,
and simvastatin 40mg OD which requires a proper diet to help lower the high cholesterol, the
community nurse may be required to make daily or even more than once a day visit to help Mrs.
Solarian in taking her medications. Since the patient is old and also stays alone, she has higher
chances of forgetting to take her medications or even overdosing. Moreover, the community
nurse must visit Mrs. Solarian on a daily basis to assess her risks of falling since she is 72 years
old, has eye cataracts and lives alone in 3rd floor walk-up apartment. Since Mrs. Solarian is a
widow, it is the role of the community nurse to offer her emotional support. This is to enhance
her psychological function and the function of her immune system (Nelson, Bobade, Hunt, &

Nursing Role by Community Nurse 2
Mundi, 2018). Mrs. Solarian also has venous ulcer on left leg which requires weekly dressings. It
is the role of the community nurse to continue with the week dressing change so as to prevent the
escalation of the infection. Since acute wounds can escalate to chronic wounds, it is important to
use proper approaches that can help in the healing cascade (Sood, Granick, & Tomaselli, 2014).
The nurse is also responsible for offering basic education on the promotion of the wound healing
so as to prevent oedema. Moreover, the community nurse is responsible for assessing the wound,
infections, pain and blood glucose levels of the patient. The community nurse assesses the
baseline vitals may refer the patient to a dietician to assess Mrs. Solarian’s diet and nutritional
habits. These assessments help in keeping hospital admission and readmissions at a minimum.
Patient 2: Mrs Melanie Bradford
Mrs. Bradford has a history of hypertension of which when uncontrolled can result into
stroke, heart failure or even aneurysm, Ischaemic Heart Disease which may lead to angina and
arrythmia, and Gastro oesophageal reflux which may cause damage to the stomach and
oesophagus tissues. The patient has therefore been taking several medications which has resulted
into Polypharmacy and associated side effects of medications. This therefore requires continuous
intervention of the community nurse so as to ensure that the adverse effects have been reduced.
According to Molokhia and Majeed (2017), polypharmacy can result into hospital readmissions
or even death, therefore it is important to continuously review the patients so at to ensure
appropriateness of the prescribed medication. In this situation, the community nurse is tasked
with offering education to Mrs. Bradford so as to ensure that she understands the importance of
taking medications as prescribed and the consequences associated with the failure. Additionally,
the education will help Mrs. Bradford to be well-informed about her health as well as take a

Nursing Role by Community Nurse 3
more active approach to its improvement. The community nurse is also tasked with offering
education to her husband and children so that they help ensure that Mrs. Bradford appropriately
takes her medication to avoid the adverse effects of polypharmacy. The community nurse is also
responsible for continuous reviewal of the prescribed medications so as to help identify the
appropriateness of the use of all these medications. This will help the nurse determine the
medications that can be discontinued and recommend the alternative therapeutic choices
available. Furthermore, routine drug monitoring will help the nurse to prevent further
complications associated with the comorbidities as well as evaluate how the patient manages to
take the prescribed medications (Dang, Nguyen, & Ho, 2019). Since Mrs. Bradford works from
home, her children are going to school and her husband works far from home, there are higher
chances that she does not adhere to dietary and nutrition plans. Therefore, it is the role of the
community nurse to visit the patient and assess her adherence to the medication and other
nonpharmacological therapies, as well as enhance her understanding of the medication regime
(Schenk, Eckardt‐Felmberg, Steinhagen‐Thiessen, & Stegemann, 2019). The community nurse is
also tasked with offering emotional and psychological support to help reduce and manage the
stress that may cause further complications hence reducing hospitalization.
Conclusion
Other than offering direct patient care, the community nurses are tasked with conducting
consistent evaluations of the healthcare needs of patients with diverse diseases and conditions so
as to ensure patient outcomes. Moreover, the community nurses offer education and emotional
support to patient and family members.

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References
Dang, T. T., Nguyen, T. H., & Ho, T. B. (2019). Causality Assessment of Adverse Drug
Reaction: Controlling Confounding Induced by Polypharmacy. Current pharmaceutical
design. doi: 10.2174/1381612825666190416115714
Egbujie, B. A., Delobelle, P. A., Levitt, N., Puoane, T., Sanders, D., & van Wyk, B. (2018). Role
of community health workers in type 2 diabetes mellitus self-management: A scoping
review. PloS one, 13(6), e0198424.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0198424
Molokhia, M., & Majeed, A. (2017). Current and future perspectives on the management of
polypharmacy. BMC family practice, 18(1), 70. doi: 10.1186/s12875-017-0642-0.
Nelson, E., Bobade, R., Hunt, V., & Mundi, M. S. (2018). Optimizing adult diabetes care in
community health. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 30(8),
443-449. doi: 10.1097/JXX.0000000000000042.
Schenk, A., Eckardt‐Felmberg, R., Steinhagen‐Thiessen, E., & Stegemann, S. (2019). Patient
behavior in medication management–Findings from a patient usability study that may
impact clinical outcomes. British journal of clinical pharmacology. doi:
10.1111/bcp.13946.
Sood, A., Granick, M. S., & Tomaselli, N. L. (2014). Wound dressings and comparative
effectiveness data. Advances in wound care, 3(8), 511-529.doi:10.1089/wound.2012.0401