Report on Community Care Roles, Characteristics, and Ethical Issues

This report delves into the roles of community health care professionals, specifically focusing on general practitioners and community nurses. It highlights their unique characteristics, such as establishing connections with vulnerable populations, facilitating healthcare navigation, and providing comprehensive care. The report also examines the organizational abilities required of these professionals, including teamwork and leadership. Furthermore, it identifies and discusses two critical ethical issues: privacy and confidentiality concerns regarding patient information, and conflicts of interest arising from interactions with pharmaceutical companies. The report emphasizes the importance of these characteristics and ethical considerations in ensuring safe, patient-centered care and maintaining the integrity of the healthcare system. References from Gastmans, Kemppainen, and Levesque are included to support the analysis.

Running head: COMMUNITY CARE
COMMUNITY CARE
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

1COMMUNITY CARE
1. Some of the characteristics that are unique to two roles of community health care
services such as general health care practitioners are-
The prime role lies is establishing the connection between the vulnerable population and the
health care. Facilitating the health care and the social service system navigation, managing care
and care transition for the vulnerable population. The ability to determine the health care needs
of the community, needs and the expectations (Kemppainen et al., 2016). The ability to plan,
manage and organize the practice for providing a broad range of accessible services involving
the management of acute and chronic care illness, health promotion, medical emergencies and
preventive activities. They should be able to make a good use of the hospital resources, money,
and skill, time both in and outside the clinical settings. They should be able to keep a clear, up to
date and coherent medical information of each of the patient.
The community health care professionals can play a prime role in achieving the health and
wellbeing of a certain population. They work with the individuals and the communities and
empower the lives of the patients (Kemppainen et al., 2016). The community health services of
an organization helps to extend the hospital based care to home after discharge, thus increasing
the patient’s satisfaction and return to the same clinical setting on being ill.
2. Characteristics of two specific roles within the community health services:-
Role of the general practitioners
Fully trained general practitioners should be caring, should be able to communicate with the
susceptible patients and their families. A general practitioner in charge of a community health

2COMMUNITY CARE
services should be able clinically competent, committed to provide a high quality of care to the
adults, should be aware of the needs of the patient and should be committed to improving the
quality of the professional performance by actively participating in quality assurance and audit.
In terms of the organizational ability, a GP should be able to able to function as a member of the
multidisciplinary team when appropriate, will be able to assume the responsibilities of a team
leader.
Role of a community nurse
They provide support for the patients and the carers. Assists the patient in wound dressings,
health monitoring and the injections. They provide practical advices on aspect of health care at
home such as life style and diet (Levesque et al., 2013). Assist in the arrangement of equipment
such as beds, hoists and commodes, provides support to the frail elderly adults, and provides
support to the patients after the hospital discharge.
These unique characteristics are important for an organization as it assures a safe health
care services to the clients, maintains the integrity and the dignity of the patient and also
enhances the professional development of the health care professionals which ultimately caters to
the organizational reputation (Levesque et al., 2013).
3. Two important ethical issues in community health organization:-
Privacy and confidentiality concerns
The health care professionals, be it the doctors and the nurses have the ethical obligation
to maintain the privacy of the patient’s information (Gastmans, 2013). All the patients should

3COMMUNITY CARE
receive a clear notification regarding how their health record are used and any disclosure of the
health information without the consent of the health care professionals should be prohibited.
Conflict of interests
The nurses and the GPs are often the prime target of the promotion or the pharmaceutical
companies and the manufacturers of medical devices, which can influence the decision making
regarding the correct choice of medications or medical devices (Gastmans, 2013). The
pharmaceutical companies offer gifts and freebies to the health care professionals that can give
rise to employee favoritism for certain manufacturers.

4COMMUNITY CARE
References
Gastmans, C. (2013). Dignity-enhancing nursing care: a foundational ethical framework.
Nursing ethics, 20(2), 142-149.
Kemppainen, V., Tossavainen, K., & Turunen, H. (2013). Nurses' roles in health promotion
practice: an integrative review. Health Promotion International, 28(4), 490-501.
Levesque, J. F., Harris, M. F., & Russell, G. (2013). Patient-centred access to health care:
conceptualising access at the interface of health systems and populations. International
journal for equity in health, 12(1), 18.