Community Health Nursing

In the year 1980, Community Health Nursing was considered as a specialized field in the
nursing practice. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), Community Health Nursing is
defined as the synthesis of nursing practice and public health practice applied to promoting and
preserving the health of populations. This field of nursing is broader and a more general specialty area
that has different subspecialties like public health nursing, school nursing, occupational health nursing as
well as other developing fields of practice.
Community health nursing is both a science of public health nursing skills together with social
assistance for which the goal of this specialized field is to raise the level of the health of the people and to
raise optimum level of functioning for everyone in that certain community. Every community health
nurse should understand and remember that community health nursing practice is both collaborative as
well as it is based on research and theory. A community health nurse should always practice their critical
thinking and applies the nursing process in certain situations in the community such as upon the care of
individuals, families and aggregates.
The American Nurses Association has revised the STANDARDS OF PRACTICE for the new
specialty are called Public Health Nursing in 2007. The following are the Standards of Public Health
Nursing as formulated by ANA (2007):

(1) Assessment
(2) Population diagnosis and priorities
STANDARDS (3) Outcomes identification
(4) Planning
OF (5) Implementation
5.1 Coordination
CARE 5.2 Health education and promotion
5.3 Consultation
5.4 Regulatory Activities
(6) Evaluation

(7) Quality of Practice

(8) Education
STANDARDS (9) Professional Practice evaluation
(10) Collegiality and professional relationships
OF (11) Collaboration
PROFESSIONAL (12) Ethics
(13) Research
PERFORMANCE (14) Resource Utilization Population
(15) Leadership