Community Nursing

What is a Community nurse?

As a community nurse you will have a varied career where no two days will be the same. Below is a summary of what the role of a community nurse in the UK may involve.

District Nursing

District nursing care is mainly provided in patients’ homes and sometimes clinics or in general practitioner surgeries. District nursing services are generally for people aged 18 years and over. The size of the teams varies according to demographic area, caseload size and patient dependency. As a team member you will have an allocated list of patients to visit daily, the workload often changes during your shift according to the need to respond to urgent new referrals or the changing acuity of current patients and so you will need to be flexible and adaptable to these changes.

The district nursing team does not work in isolation but contributes to the wider multidisciplinary team that supports patients with care needs living in the community

Health Visiting

Health Visiting teams specialise in working with families with a child aged 0 to five to identify health needs as early as possible and improve health and wellbeing by promoting health, preventing ill health and reducing inequalities.

Health Visitors are specialist nurses who have a further specialist qualification in Public Health and start at Band 6. Overseas nurses assigned to Health Visiting start as Band 5 Community Health Nurse in Health Visiting until they are ready to take an additional specialist qualification in Public Health to become Health Visitors

Bedded Rehabilitation

Bedded rehabilitation units are community-based wards that aim to help patients maximise their independence following illness or injury, and get them back on the road to recovery after a short period of care and therapy.

Patients will have therapy input in the rehabilitation units to help them become as independent as possible. Basic nursing care is provided on the units and we aim to support patients to manage their own health conditions and look after themselves.

Before most patients are discharged, they receive a home assessment and the therapy team work with social services to ensure a safe package of care on discharge.

School Nursing

School Nursing teams work with families and young people from when they start school at 4 up to 19 years of age and are usually linked to a school or group of schools, providing a link between school, home and the community. Their aim is to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people.

School nurses are not based in schools but work in partnership with linked schools and other professionals to ensure children’s health needs are met. This may include signposting or referring to other services.

Like Health Visitors, school nurses are specialist nurses who have a further specialist qualification in Public Health.

Case Studies

The following case studies have been provided by two community nurses, who were recruited from the Philippines and India. The purpose of the case studies is to give you a comparison of the differences in working as a community nurse in the UK to your own country.

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Nursing in the Community – The Queen’s Nursing Institute

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