COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT AND DIAGNOSIS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT AND DIAGNOSIS - Essay Example This definition regards health to be a holistic concept that integrates physical, psychological, cultural, and social aspects. Primary health care (PHC) is the new paradigm upon which attainment of holistic health goals has become possible. Public health care rests on attainment of good health through community empowerment, coordination, prevention, and health education (Funnell, Koutoukidis, and Karen, 2008). Therefore, Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion-1986 and Alma-Ata Declaration-1978, have become frameworks upon which PHC builds and operates. Health assessment and diagnosis is part of primary health care, and this is vital specifically in designing, packaging, and implementing health care programs and policies. Therefore, a thorough understanding of health assessment and diagnosis is generally important as formidable foundation to attainment of good primary health care program or policy. Community Health Assessment In order to have a thorough understanding of the community, community assessment has become one way of understanding and conceptualizing community. Vollman, Anderson, and McFarlane (2007) describe community assessment as an organized, orderly, and logical process that involves coordinated attempts to understand a particular community. The role of community assessment cannot be ignored by any professional, since community assessment is associated with desire to identify desirable and undesirable factors that influence the health wellbeing of people in the community. At the same time, Hancock and Minkler (1997) ascertain that community health assessment plays role in generating information for change and subsequent empowerment (cited in Vollman, Anderson, and McFarlane, 2007). Community-as-Partner Model The model is based on Neuman’s model of total-person approach, which identifies (Anderson and McFarlane, 2010). Initially, the model was created as community-as-client model to i llustrate the need for public health nursing but was later renamed community-as-partner model to reflect aspects of primary health care (Anderson and McFarlane, 2010). The model integrates and reflects aspects of systems models whereby, different parts interrelate and function in unity but the larger (whole) system is considered greater than the sub-sets systems. The model integrates the four aspects of nursing - person, environment, health, and nursing. Community-as-partner model builds on two major factors ingrained in the model: community as partner, and the utilization of nursing process to work among community people (Anderson and McFarlane, 2010). Community assessment wheel Source: Anderson and McFarlane, 2010 As the model can depict, key concepts of the model include community core, eight interacting community subsystems, community stressors, and boundaries, which have been named as normal level of defense, flexible line of defense, and lines of resistances (Lundy and Janes, 2009). Core constitutes community people with their values, beliefs, and history, and in turn, the core influences and it is influenced by the eight inter-related subsystems. The subsystems include physical environment, education, safety and transportation, politics and governance, health and social services, communication, economics, and recreation (Lundy and Janes, 2009). Apart from carrying out assessment on these two aspects, community nurse is further required to conduct assessment of current stressors that largely make the community experience tension, normal level of d