Community Health Worker Final Project: Core Competencies Analysis

This project is a comprehensive analysis of a Community Health Worker's (CHW) core competencies, focusing on the skills and knowledge acquired during a practicum experience. The student, aiming to become a CHW, reflects on the ten Massachusetts core competencies, including patient-centered care, leadership, communication, professionalism, systems-based practice, teamwork, informatics, safety, quality improvement, and evidence-based practice. The project details how these competencies were developed and applied in a healthcare setting, providing examples of how the student addressed challenges related to communication, teamwork, and patient safety. References to relevant literature are included to support the analysis of these competencies and their importance in the role of a CHW. The project highlights the student's readiness for employment and their ability to contribute effectively to a healthcare organization.

Running head: COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER FINAL PROJECT
Community Health Worker Final project
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER FINAL PROJECT
Core competencies acquired during the practicum experience
My readiness to become employed as a Community Health Worker is based on the 10
Massachusetts core competencies and skills that are possessed by me for progressing in my
career as well as gain practicum experience while working within the health and social care
organisation. With the help of these competencies, I have managed to acquire practicum
experience to become employed as a CHW though there are other skills that are required by
me and most importantly, it has been the evidence based practice skills.
The Massachusetts core competencies that are required to maintain good amount of
nursing skills and knowledge include patient centred care, leadership, communication,
professionalism, systems based practice, teamwork and collaboration, Informatics and
technology, safety, quality improvement and evidence based practice or EBP (Cepiku,
Denita, and Filippo, p. 320). All these are of equal importance and these have helped me in
dealing with various issues and complexities within the health and social care and also
facilitated my behaviours and approach towards successfully being employed as a community
health worker at a renowned health care organisation.

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COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER FINAL PROJECT
The patient centred care skills are associated with the various components of
nursing that are managed to provide treatment to the individuals, family, group members as
well as improve the community health and wellbeing along with taking care of the needs and
health of population all across their life span. This has also enhanced my knowledge about
the community values and to fulfil the needs and preferences of the patients while also
provide physical and emotional support to them during their need (Sabo et al. p. e70). I have
acquired psychomotor nursing skills along with cognitive skills, which allowed me to
communicate the patient values and ensured expressing the needs of patents to the health care
team members too.
The leadership competency represented the acquisition of leadership skills and
knowledge required to promote better thinking, communication and also facilitate change
within the health care organisation to meet the patient care needs. With the gathering of these

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skills, I managed to foster cooperative and collaborative working behaviours, which further
helped in acting as a role model and empower the staffs. For example there was lack of
communication and teamwork, thus, to deal with this kind of problem during the practicum
experience, I arranged a meeting and engaged them in training sessions for strengthening
their skills and foster effective teamwork and collaboration at work too (Davis, p. 20).
With the management of system based practice skills, I managed to learn quite a lot
about understanding the work unit inefficiencies and operational failures at the health care,
which often results in long waiting time for the patients to get the right treatment. This kind
of skill allowed me to seek solutions to the problems experienced during the point of care,
furthermore, keep the management constantly informed and acknowledged about the
problems of work unit too. I have also learned about managing the resources properly
required to facilitate delegation of tasks to the team members, furthermore, achieve the
quality patient outcomes with ease and effectiveness.
The communication skills are best suited for me to communicate with the patients as
well as their families along with conducting assessment of readiness of patients to interact
with the care workers and make them informed about their needs and preferences (Ahn et al.,
p. 264). These kind of skills has enabled me to identify the barriers to effective
communication and at the same time, helped to analyse the verbal and non-verbal responses.
With the establishment of good communication, I learned the importance of managing
conflicts with ease and improve the therapeutic relationships through prevention of disruptive
behaviours too.
The teamwork and collaboration skills have enhanced my ability to manage
integrity, openness and transparency along with working collaboratively with the patients,
family members of theirs and also the community health workers. I have gained self-

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awareness skills and learned to initiate plan for the purpose of self-development along with
practicing collaborative decision making practice. It has also helped me to understand the
scope of medical practices and at the same time, managed accountability while making the
teams function properly too (Clark et al., p. 176). It also assisted me to acquire the inputs of
other team members in the form of responses, views and opinions, which allowed for better
decision making and consistency in reducing the risks associated with the transfer of
knowledge and information between the individuals during the transition of healthcare
practices.
Within a healthcare setting, management of safety is critical for ensuring proper
health and wellbeing of patients as well as the care workers. For example, few patients might
show aggressive behaviours and even not agree to take medicine and in such cases, conflicts
tend to emerge. Due to this, I have acquired safety data and information and also conducted
the risk assessment procedure to analyse any risks that might be the cause of severe hazards
(Creamer, Anne and Wendy, p. 240). The engagement in safety survey has also helped me to
communicate the observations and concerns related to the hazards and risks faced by the
patients during the transition in care.

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References
Ahn, Eun-Kyong, and Seon-Kyung Kim. "Disaster experience, perception and core
competencies on disaster nursing of nursing students." Journal of digital Convergence 11.6
(2013): 257-267.
Cepiku, Denita, and Filippo Giordano. "Co-production in developing countries: Insights from
the community health workers experience." Public Management Review 16.3 (2014): 317-
340.
Clark, Megan, et al. "Global and public health core competencies for nursing education: a
systematic review of essential competencies." Nurse education today 40 (2016): 173-180.
Creamer, Anne Marie, and Wendy Austin. "Canadian Nurse Practitioner Core Competencies
Identified: An Opportunity to Build Mental Health and Illness Skills and Knowledge." The
Journal for Nurse Practitioners 13.5 (2017): e231-e236.
Davis Boykins, Anita. "Core communication competencies in patient-centered care." ABNF
Journal 25.2 (2014).
Sabo, Samantha, et al. "Predictors and a framework for fostering community advocacy as a
community health worker core function to eliminate health disparities." American Journal of
Public Health 103.7 (2013): e67-e73.