The health promotion process enables people to have control over their health and this helps them to improve it. Moreover, health promotion means that for a community, individual, or any group to reach the point of having complete well-being socially, mentally, and physically, they should realize their wants, suit their needs, and be able to handle the surroundings. Hence, health being a daily resource that emphasizes the personal and social resources, its promotion should be the responsibility of the health sector, individuals, and community cutting across their well-being to healthy lifestyles (World Health Organization, 2009).
The health sector involves various players in health promotion and nursing is one of them. As a result, nurses have active roles in promoting health to the community and patients. Being a nurse, there are various ways through which I can participate in the active promotion of health in collaboration with my patient or community. For instance, since the roles of nurses are treatment or diagnosis of human responses to illness and health, community-based nursing may include health practitioner roles to provide care, education, leadership, and research. Whereby, every responsibility defined above is a responsibility of nurses to their communities, they are interrelated and helpful in current or future needs of patients (Brenda, Janice, Kerry, OConnell, & Suzanne, 2010).
Health practitioner roles describe the actions employed by nurses when meeting the nursing and health care needs of individual patients, friends, and families. The nurses involved can help patients to meet their needs through interventions, instructing them on how to perform the care, collaborating and coordinating with other sectors to provide proficient health services (Brenda, Janice, Kerry, OConnell, & Suzanne, 2010).
When performing health practitioner roles, nurses are assumed to exhibit an overall leadership role. They do not have to wait for their group leader to make decisions, but fluctuations in health care demands and patient population sizes make qualities of leadership inherent to them automatically. Additionally, nurses portray leadership roles when they implement actions to determine the results of patient care (Brenda, Janice, Kerry, OConnell, & Suzanne, 2010).
Moreover, nurses in their practitioner role need to conduct research to determine the effectiveness of their intervention and care. For quality patient care, nurses grow their nursing science or career through research. However, only those nurses involved in patient care that identifies the research problem while the others have a responsibility to actively participate in the ongoing research activities to facilitate data compilation and actualization. Moreover, they are the professionals entrusted to give an explanation to patients, their families, or the community on the outcome of their research. In the end, they should ensure they meet the research findings to their nursing practices, its application, validation, reproduction, distribution, and assessment of research findings to further the study in nursing (Brenda, Janice, Kerry, OConnell, & Suzanne, 2010).
Furthermore, community-based nursing can supply care at societal levels when employing the practitioner role. Through community-based programs and initiatives, nurses have been taking care of the older population and patients needing special care like ventilator-supported patients. Moreover, nurses are providing home care services to meet the need of outpatients and shorter hospital stays. This has led to efficiency in caring for patients who have been discharged from the hospital to their families with acute or terminal diseases (Brenda, Janice, Kerry, OConnell, & Suzanne, 2010).
In conclusion, in order to promote the health of patients and the community, nurses have an active role bearing in mind that they are the background of treating or diagnosis of disease and relate a lot with patients. They have to educate the community and their patient on some basic facts about some diseases through intensive campaigns.
References
Brenda G. B., Janice L. H., Kerry H. C., OConnell, S., & Suzanne C. (2010). Brunner and Suddarths Textbook of Medical-Surgical Nursing. New York: Lippincot Williams & Wilkins.
World Health Organization (2010). Milestone in Health Promotion. Statement from Global Conference. Geneva Switzerland: WHO Press.