Community Assessment
During community strategic plans, nurses take into consideration patient assessment. Patient factors such as gender, age, cultural beliefs, education level, and socioeconomic background are assessed during community assessment. Nurses take each patient’s history comprehensively to identify the needs of their patients to ensure better patient outcomes. The assessment tool used to identify patients’ needs during the needs assessment is Gordon’s eleven functional health patterns (Gordon, 2011). This tool provides an overview of each person’s lifestyle and behaviors which are essential in determining the health risks involved with that behavior.
The identified area of focus in the community is the prevalence of mental health disorders. There are various mental health conditions within the community in New York. The most common mental health disorders include depression, bipolar mood disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia. Poor mental health affects the quality of life of an individual since it alters peoples’ thought processes. For example, individuals with depression have decreased appetite; therefore, this negatively affects an individual’s nutritional status (Gordon, 2011). Hence, mental health disorders should be diagnosed and treated to improve the quality of life of the community members through improved mental health
Resources Needed for Community Assessment
The resources available for assessing mental health disorders within the community include questionnaires with appropriate questions, pens, cameras, and experienced personnel. These resources will ensure an adequate and comprehensive assessment of the mental health conditions within the community (St John & Keleher, 2020). The findings of this assessment include altered health-perception and health management pattern, elimination pattern, activity-exercise pattern, cognitive-perception pattern, self-perception-self-concept pattern, reduced relationships, low sex drive, reduced coping mechanisms, and archaic values and beliefs.
Strengths and Concerns of the Community
The strengths and concerns that have been identified in the community’s mental health are that it involves an inexpensive process that takes little time and resources to complete and is efficient in terms of execution. The second strength is that the assessments can be conducted while on foot since it does not involve carrying much equipment (Hebert-Beirne et al., 2017). The process employs methods whereby community residents’ viewpoints are taken into consideration rather than non-residents’ viewpoints.
The third strength is that during community assessment, photography is used to capture vital information that will be used to derive perspectives of those who reside in those locations. Photovoice promotes knowledge to understand issues affecting the community through small and large group discussions of the photos taken (Hebert-Beirne et al., 2017). While planning, constructing, and designing the community assessment, walking across the community will help determine specific locations to do the assessment.
Challenges Affecting Implementation of Community Plans
Various challenges face the implementation of health plans. These challenges include inadequate resources required to sustain the program, such as funds and limited human resources, and another challenge is geographic limitations. Some of the terrains have proved difficult to access areas where implementation needs to occur (Rural Health Information, 2021). The language barrier is also a significant issue in implementing these plans since understanding each other is difficult.
These barriers can be overcome through the acquisition of enough resources that will sustain the implementation phase. Pre-visit of the area needs to be done to identify the best routes to the site. Training of the appropriate human resource is required to ensure adequate implementation of plans. While implementing the actions, ensure that there is an interpreter of the local community language and healthcare professionals.
References
Gordon, M. (2011). Manual of nursing diagnosis (12th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett
Hebert-Beirne, J., Felner, J. K., Castañeda, Y., & Cohen, S. (2017). Enhancing themes and strengths assessment: Leveraging academic-led qualitative inquiry in community health assessment to uncover roots of community health inequities. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 23(4), 370-379. Web.
Rural Health Information. (2021). Common implementation challenges. Web.
St John, W., & Keleher, H. (2020). Community assessment for health: In Community Nursing Practice (pp. 77-90). Routledge. Web.