THE THE ATTITUDE OF NURSES ON COMMUNITY NURSING CAPACITY BUILDING

Abstract

The aim of this survey research was to determine the attitude of nurses toward community nursing capacity building. Samples were 130 nurses who were purposively selected from nurses who were working at primary care level in which 97 were working at Health Care Promotion, 17 were working at Primary Care Cluster and 34 were working at others. Data were collected by demographic form, prioritizing community nursing care, and attitude toward community nursing capacity building. Questionnaires were sent to three experts for content validity and try out with 30 nurses for reliability in which Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .98. Descriptive statistics were utilized to describe the findings.

The findings were shown that majority of samples were female (93.8%), aged between 30-45 years (39.2%), working at Health Care Promotion Hospital (60.8%), and worked as a nurse for 6-10 years (24.8%). Most of the samples mentioned that promote health was the first priority in working as community nurses (74.6%). The highest mean scores on the personal characteristic were community nurses should have a good relationship (M=4.22, SD =.63). Regarding health care promotion, the highest mean scores were health status screening (M=4.11, SD = 0.59). Regarding the network of health care, the highest mean score was empowering families and communities in collaboration on self - care and/or change health care behaviors (M=3.94, SD = 0.68). Regarding the research and knowledge management, the highest mean scores were developed clinical practice guidelines (M=3.64, SD = .70).

The suggestions from the findings are that raising community nurse capacity should be focused on health care promotion, network, community and family empowerment. More importantly, capacity raising should be the focus on research development with the aims of enhancing the health care status of people, families, and communities.