Community Health Nursing

Community health nursing is one of the two broadest fields of nursing practice in terms of setting, the other one being hospital-based nursing. This field of nursing is coined from a combination of three words, community, health, and nursing. In this specialization, the community is the principal client, which is usually defined as a group, population, or cluster of people with at least common characteristic such as geographic location, occupation, ethnicity, or housing condition. As defined by the World Health Organization, it is determined by geographical boundaries and common values and interests. In connection, health, as defined by the World Health Organization, is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. It is basically the optimum level of the functioning of individuals, families, and communities as affected by factors in the ecosystem. Nursing, on the other hand, is a caring profession rendered and provided by a professional nurse with the characteristics of humanistic, comprehensive, individualized, holistic, skillful, efficient, patient-focused, and quality high standard of care.