Risks Associated with Community Nursing: A Literature Review

Running head: COMMUNITY NURSING
COMMUNITY NURSING
Name of the Student:
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AUTHOR NOTE:

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COMMUNITY NURSING
Introduction:
Community nursing mainly denotes community nurses visiting communities as well as
the homes of the affected patients in order to provide home care services to the patients
according to the needs of the patients. Such nurses mainly try to assess the risks that are
associated with the patients when they live alone in their houses and to take care whether the
caregivers of the patients are providing good care or not according to the education imparted on
them (Hudson et al., 2015). According to the needs identified by the nursing professionals after
visiting the homes of the patients, they can also help the patient connect with the appropriate
community services for different types of support (Oliver et al., 2014). This assignment would be
mainly based on discussing the various risks that remain associated with the lives of the nurses
who provide this form of services. Various literatures would be reviewed in order to gather more
evidences of the risks faced by the nurses and would be discussed in the assignment.
Function of nurses in this domain:
Studies have clarified that such community visiting services mainly begin at the hospital
or other healthcare facilities. Professionals are seen to work closely with the patients in order to
ensure that smooth transition is done for the patients who are returning home. All the different
aspects of the care are coordinated and addressed among the families and accordingly
modifications are done in the home and individuals are educated for better care (Hafskjold et al.,
2016). Therefore, under the direction of the physician, the registered nurse will visit the patient
and provide a thorough assessment. She will mainly work as a case manager to help the patients
and the family members meet the care needs and teach them, support and identify others services
they need (Dmytryshyn et al., 2015).

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COMMUNITY NURSING
These services mainly recruit nurses who need to have expertise in different domains of
nursing. These domains may contain disease management, diabetic care, medication
management, and cardiac care, wound care, and post surgical care, geriatrics, maternal and
childcare as well as pediatrics (Sundler et al., 2016). Therefore, they can visit patients with wide
variety of disorders and management issues and identify their need and accordingly suggests
services and interventions.
Risks associated with caring for mental health patients:
Studies have reported that although they have several benefits, yet many of the nurses
have complained of severe safety issues. This aspect had rises an concern about the security and
safety of this form of services and that effective policies need to be developed by government
and organizations had to take responsibilities of the safety of nurses trough protocols and
guidelines (Jukic et al., 2017). The nursing professionals disclosed a scary experience in one of
the qualitative studies based on open-ended questionnaires by the interviewers. The nurse had
stated that she as locked in the family home and she was not allowed to leave. She had received
no call from the office to determine her safety. Even after the occurrence of the incident, the
organization had not conducted any follow-up with the family and no additional safety plan was
developed. In fact, the organization gain allocated the same nurse to attend the same patient
(Nakken et al., 2015).
Literature review conducted had shown that community-visiting services were
specifically more risky for the nursing professionals when they had to visit patients for mental
health patients. Many of the patients suffering from the mental health disorders, which are
psychotic in nature, can be specifically dangerous cases for professionals to handle. Such

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situations can expose the nurses to unpredictable events in the house of the patients like that of
aggression and violence on the professionals (Vander et al., 2016). They can be subjected to
physical, mental, emotional as well as verbal violence that might create a concern for the safety
issues of the nurses.
Many of the papers had compared the risk faced by mental health professionals who
provide acute care services to patients in hospitals with that of the community visiting nurses
who visit mental healthcare patients in their homes. Although, both of the nurses were seen to
project being sufferers of violence and aggression form mental health patients, the risks of safety
issues and harm to their health were higher in case of the latter nurses (Wishart et al., 2016) .
Some of the points being opinionated by the researchers for the increased safety issues of the
latter cohort of professionals is the absence of immediate help from the other healthcare
professionals of the team and from the organization providing the services. In the hospitals,
nurses tend to get immediate help from their colleagues and mental support after facing the
incidences. This attribute reduces their anxiety and support their mental condition after facing the
aggression. Any physical harm faced by the professionals is immediately treated. However, such
is not the case of the professionals who are visiting communities or homes for assessing the
unmet needs of the mental health patients and accordingly develop interventions. They also
remain highly vulnerable to violence and aggression but their safety issues remain a huge
concern (Pink et al., 2015). They cannot get any immediate help from other professionals or
organization when the mental health patient attacks the nurse or behaves in an unethical manner.
Such nurses mostly report physical, sexual and verbal assaults and emotional or mental violence
are less. These aspects might harm the professionals physically and mentally affecting their
ability to work and carry on their profession. Such professionals who have faced physical