A Study of community diagnosis activity by Community Health Nurse Working in Health Centers

보건소 보건간호사의 지역사회 진단활동에 관한 조사연구

An important role of community health nurses in health centers is to solve community health problems found through data collection methodology which has been used to identify the health needs of the community, diagnose the health problems and to plan health programs suitable for the health problems. Also community health nurses must be prepared to know the community health needs and to participate in the planning process. Since 1956 when the health center law was established, community health nurses have really implemented only the services which the government has asked them to do. This has kept them busy enough. But these days as society is in rapid change, community health nurses should have the flexibility to deal with the social change and demands that are unique to their community each which has different health needs and demands. So community health nurses need to identify what community health problems exist in their particular communities. The purposes of this study were as follows. 1) To explore the suitability of the health programs which the government has asked the community health nurses to do for their own communities and if these programs are not suitable, to explore the reasons why. 2) To explore the degree to which the community health nurses have the ability to identify health problems in their own communities and activate the community diagnostic process. 3) To identify the degree that the community health nurses have the ability to implement plans related to community diagnosis. 4) To find out how much data related to community health problems, the community health nurses have and how they are utilizing it. 5) To measure the community health nurses self-confidence concerning diagnostic activities for community health. The study subjects were 454 Community Health Nurses working in Health Centers in Seoul, Korea. The period of data collection was 6 days(Nov. 9th 1991-Nov. 15th 1991). A questionnaire used for data collection was composed of three different items; general characteristics, community health diagnostic activities and self-confidence in performing diagnostic activities. The results of the study are as follows. First, over one third of the respondents replied that the government required activities for their communities are not appropriate. Of these activities the most frequent reply $(51.2\%)$ indicated that many of the activities in the community were inappropriate to the actual situation. Further, $25\%$ of the replies indicated that many activities were only administratively oriented and as such not appropriate. Second, $49.8\%$ of the respondents replied that they had done general assessments and had a general idea of the health problems of their community. Effective solutions to health problems could be found with an increase in health personnel and management ability according to $41.5\%$ of the respondents. Third, to the question as to whether they had ever independently implemented a plan towards solving community diagnosed problems, $52\%$ of nurses replied 'never', $40\%$ 'occasionally' but only $7.5\%$ replied that they did it frequently. Actually there was very little done even in the basic work of collecting the necessary data. Fourth, when asked how much of basic information they had collected that might be used in community diagnosis activity, of 26 items in 5 areas, there was hardly one for which complete data had been collected. Fifteen percent did have data on the geographical aspects of their area, housing distribution and types of housing, while $17.8\%$ knew the frequency with which the health center was used. Concerning community resources, even with a list of community resources, only $12.3\%$ had data on any of these resources, and this data was incomplete. Further, information about social work institutions, and facilities was also incomplete, only $14.2\%$ of the respondents had any data and even it was incomplete; that is, in general, the nurses did not have this information. Fifth, concerning the confidence of the community health nurse in their ability to carry out community diagnoses activities, $60\%$ replied that they were very or at least nominally confident, indicating that although they were not doing community diagnostic activities they felt they could do so, as they were carrying out home visits and program planning as part of their official duties. The following recommendations are made based on the results of this study. First; since the community health nurses have a high perception of the need for community diagnostic activities and. high confidence in their ability to carry out this activity and high percentage of respondents replied that with a little training they could do this even better it is recommended that community diagnostic activity training be included in the continuing education program for community health nurses. Second, in order for the Community Health Nurses to successfully solve the health problems of their respective community they reported to a need to increase the number of health personnel, improve the facilities and the system of managing their work. Considering this, it is recommended that ways be sought to remedy these deficits.