Perceptions of health assessment, treatment and care by community nurses

M.Cur.One of the most important qualities of the primary health care nurse is to possess the necessary psychomotor , cognitive, affective and specific managerial skills to enable her to perform her diagnostic, therapeutic and interpersonal activities. These skills enable the primary health care nurse to provide quality care through physical examination, prescribing and storing drugs and keeping the necessary written records and statistics. The White Paper on Transformation of Health Care Services recommends that . the Department of Health trains primary health care personnel according to the appropriate level of care. Primary health care nurses fall under the categories of health care providers that are regarded by the department of health as a training pnonty. This training also needs to be coordinated and, if necessary, rationalised. Particular emphasis should be placed on training personnel for rendering effective primary health care. If the curriculum for the training of primary health care nurses is to be reviewed successfully, it should reflect community needs more accurately and the teaching should place more emphasis on community-and outcome-based programmes. This research was undertaken to explore and describe the perceptions held about health assessment, treatment and care programmes by primary health care nurses ·to assist those involved in the provision of health care to render quality care. The aim of this study was to explore and describe whether primary health care nurses are equipped with the skills they require in health assessment, treatment and care. The researcher used an exploratory, descriptive and contextual, design to do this. The data was obtained through focus group interviews with community nurses in the first phase, and with patients in the second phase of data collection respectively. In the. third phase, guidelines were compiled from the data obtained in phases one and two to outline how primary health care nurses should function in health assessment, treatment and care of their patients. The results of this research show that the community nurses and patients perceive primary health care nurses to be skilful in psychomotor, cognitive and attitude aspects