Case Management Nursing: An Approach to Community Health

In addition to considering the needs of populations, the community health nurse is prepared to provide direct care services to subpopulations within a community. These subpopulations may be a clinical focus in which the nurse has gained expertise.

Case management nursing is a nursing approach that merges knowledge from the public health sciences with professional nursing theories to safeguard and improve the health of populations in the community. An example of this is a case manager who follows older adults recovering from stroke and sees the need for community rehabilitation services. A nurse practitioner who gives immunizations to clients with the objective of managing communicable diseases within the community is also one.

The community health nurse cares for the community as a whole and considers the individual or family to be only one member of a group at risk. Competence as a case management nursing professional requires the ability to use interventions that take into account the broad social and political context in which the community problems occur and are resolved.

The educational requirements for entry-level nurses practicing in community health nursing roles are not as clear-cut as those for public health nurses. An advanced degree may not be required. However, nurses with a graduate degree in nursing who practice in community settings are considered community health nurse specialists, regardless of their public health experience.

The expert community health nurse understands the needs of a community through experience with individual families and working through their social and health care issues.

APN: Advanced Practice Nursing

APN: Advanced Practice Nursing

Why is there a need for advanced practice nurses (APNs)? The last quarter of the 20th century taught that detection, prevention, promotion, early intervention and education are not only cost-effective but also rational. They are ideally suited to deliver this type of health care.

Advanced practice nursing entails masteral or doctorate preparedness of nurses. Critical reflective thinking, self-directed learning and leadership skills are expectations for health-care providers in the 21st century. Therefore, this branch of nursing builds on the foundation of professional nursing practice and responds to the health care needs of the country.

Are APN’s contributions unique, valuable and can be evaluated? Let us take a look at the following examples:

• Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS): In a hospital, the CNS must be able to identify how performance contributes to the patient-focused mission and goals of the organization. Does the CNS’s practice reduce length of stay, improve patient outcomes or enhance the efficiency of staff nurses?

• Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM): The CNM’s ability to better meet patient needs, or to provide services to groups of patients at a lower cost than services provided by physicians, should be measurable.

• Nurse Practitioner (NP): In an outpatient setting, the NP would need to document both the quality and quantity of services provided to patients and the ability to reduce hospitalization rates.

• Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist(CRNA): In evaluating anesthesia services in a chronic low back pain clinic, the CRNA would want to clearly document quality of service and patient outcomes.

The NCLEX RN Examination Study Guide

The National Council Licensure Examination-Registered Nurse licensing examination is a Computer Adaptive Test that runs from 75 to 265 individual items, relaying on an individual’s performance on the exam. Following graduation from your respective nursing programs, triumphant conclusion of this test is a nurse’s doorway to his/her professional career as a nurse. The outline for this examination is revised and revisited every 3 years by the NSCBN depending on the results of a job scrutiny study of fresh graduate nurses rendering the practice of nursing within the initial 6 months following commencement. Every item on the exam is itemized as “Client Need Category” and an “Integrated Process”.

Client Need Categories
There will be four categories for client needs, and every test is going enclose a lowest and a highest questions available from each category.

• Effective Care Environment and Safety
1. Management of Care
2. Infection Control and safety
• Health Maintenance and Promotion
• Psychosocial Integrity
• Physiological Integrity
1. Comfort and Basic care
2. Parenteral and Pharmacological Therapies
3. Risk Potential reduction
4. Physiological Adaptation

Integrated Processes
The integrated processes acknowledged on the NCLEX for RNs exam plan are the following:

• Nursing process: a systematic problem-solving method utilized in the practice of nursing ;
Composed of the steps of the nursing process which are assessing, analyzing, planning, implementing, and evaluating
• Caring: nurse-client relations characterized by shared value and confidence and that are bound on the way to the achievement of preferred results.
• Documentation and communication: nonverbal and/or verbal contacts between nurse and the patient including family members and members of the health care team; a written or electronic documentation of actions or events that happen while the client is under the nurse’s care
• Teaching and Learning: helping the client gain knowledge, attitudes, and capabilities that direct to behavior modification.

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