A review of methodology on community health nursing diagnosis

PURPOSE: To develop a systematic method and model for community health nursing diagnosis to be used in teaching and in community practices. METHOD: From searching the databases of Medline (from Jan. 1966 to May 1997) and the Japana Centra Revuo Medicina (from Jan. 1987 to Jan. 1997), literature on community diagnosis, community health nursing, diagnosis, assessment and analysis were classified into keywords, purposes, subjects, health problems and methods. RESULTS: 1. As an explanation of the process of nursing diagnosis the community-as-partner model (Anderson and McFarlane; 1995) is useful for understanding the target community and the use of the community health nursing diagnosis process. 2. The methodology of the community health nursing diagnosis is based on three strategies of public health diagnosis. The method of interview surveys was strengthened by incorporating the ethnographic method. 3. Several case studies in the partnership between communities and universities in USA were introduced. CONCLUSION: Changes in community health policy require that public health nurses develop specialized and comprehensive practices in their communities. The authors presented the model of the community health nursing diagnosis process and proposed a partnership between communities and universities. The construction of community health nursing diagnosis process in this paper is based on the public health diagnosis framework consisting of three strategies, to which analysis of existing data, a social survey utilized in epidemiological community diagnosis, and free interviewing from ethnographic methods are incorporated. Developing this systematic diagnosis process of facilitates the search for potential or actual community health problems or concerns, the practice of applying data from surveys and the discussion of concrete strategies toward problem solving. It is useful for educational and research processes and in practice in the community.