The Practice Of Community Assessment

Introduction and Purpose The practice of community assessment in nursing care is very important because it is a useful tool for nurses to assess and understand factors that determines the health of a community (Stamler & Yiu, 2012). Sahud and Bartfay (2010), in their research maintained that the responsibility of a community health nurse is to review the community need for resources and assets that are beneficial to wellbeing of the community. The public health nurse also works collaboratively with the community and stake holders to plan for programs that will promote the community’s wellbeing and quality of life (Sahud and Bartfay 2010). Community assessment is important as stated in the Ottawa Charter of 1986, that in order to
White Eagle residence is a 54 bed long term home for mostly homeless population under the care of public guardianship. Residents at the facility are 25 adult males between the ages of 58 and 91years and, 29 adult females between the ages of 65 and 100 years old. The residents are made up of 52 whites of non-Hispanic origin with only 2 residents with black ethnicity. The most spoken languages are polish and English. The residents has moderate literacy levels with 7 college and University graduates, 15 High school graduates, 8 elementary school graduates and 24 other resident that could not be assess due to low level of functionality. My aggregate community is considered low income population (Statistics Canada,
Furthermore, a systematic review was conducted to gain understanding of my target population health using a credible reference point of view. In my data collection, both qualitative and quantitative data collection process were employed to get important information about my aggregate with regards to their age, gender, ethnicity marital status, education. Qualitative analysis was used to understand the personal thoughts about the meaning of health, satisfaction of my population about life, services and resources available to them in the facility and the community of my study. A quantitative data helps obtain verifiable information that can be used to compare between variables in a larger population about factors that determines the health of individual and general population. As stated by LoBiondo-Wood, Haber, Cameron, and Singh (2013), quantitative data are used to ask people for their opinions in order to produce fact and statistics to guide practice while qualitative data is “used gain an understanding underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations” (LoBiondo-Wood et al, 2013). Furthermore, the resident electronic medical files were used to