Page 34 - fourth year book

COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSING

Introduction

Opportunities and challenges in nursing are boundless and rapidly
changing. You have spent a lot of time and effort learning how to care for
individual patients in acute-care–oriented nursing specialties. Now you are
entering a unique and exciting area of nursing—community health.

There is the challenge of expanding nursing’s focus from the
individual and family to encompass communities and the opportunity to
affect the health status of populations.

Defining Health and Wellness

Health

The World Health Organization (1947): ―Health is a state of
complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity.‖

Wellness further describes health status. It allows health to be placed on

a continuum from one’s optimal level (―wellness‖) to a maladaptive state
(―illness‖)
Degrees of illness and wellness

Health and disease lie a long continuum figure (1) and there is no
single cut off point. The lowest point on the health- disease spectrum is
death and highest point corresponds to the WHO definition of positive
health. It is obvious that health fluctuates within arrange of optimum well-

being to various levels of dysfunction, including the state of total
dysfunction namely the death.

Figure (1): Health always involves many levels. As well, illness involves
many degrees

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