Please help me! Public Health/Community Rotation

It would help to start with performing a windshield survey of the community and speak with patient's during your clinical rotations about what they feel may be the biggest issues and needs within the specific community.

Where is your clinical SITE for this rotation? Is it at or with an established community health organization or public health organization? It is hard for me to imagine that a school would say "Hey Squidney, youre on a public health rotation, go into the community and make change." Do you have a clinical coordinator within the school you could talk to? Or a community partner you are working with?

For my population health rotation I was placed within a community organization who was working with undeserved populations. I did a great deal of research on community needs using the community health needs assessment tool produced by Community Commons. I also surveyed clients who presented at the community organization where I was "stationed" and I produced a survey to be used to call individuals who had been helped at the organization in the past.

Where is your clinical SITE for this rotation? Is it at or with an established community health organization or public health organization? It is hard for me to imagine that a school would say "Hey Squidney, youre on a public health rotation, go into the community and make change." Do you have a clinical coordinator within the school you could talk to? Or a community partner you are working with?

For my population health rotation I was placed within a community organization who was working with undeserved populations. I did a great deal of research on community needs using the community health needs assessment tool produced by Community Commons. I also surveyed clients who presented at the community organization where I was "stationed" and I produced a survey to be used to call individuals who had been helped at the organization in the past.

This is my thought too. Community based nurses have actual jobs and patients to see, they don't just go around randomly knocking on doors or meeting people at the grocery store and nursing them. What is your placement? Clinic? Home Health Agency? School?

I have a very unique community based role at the moment- I am a community based case manager for medically complex children in foster care. I don't interact with random people in the community at all, just my patients and their families but by seeing where they live, I have a better understanding of their social determinants of health, etc.

When I was in school, I completed my community clinical half in Central America working in a clinic and half working for the public health department of my city. Another classmate and I wrote an article about workers' rights with regards to safety and had it published in several Spanish speaking newspapers in the city.

What kind of site are you at for you community rotation - in my program people were placed in a wide variety of community settings and thus what patient population they were working with, primary health concerns and so on varied. You have some sor tof a role or home base in a clinical placement - you don't just wander around knocking on doors. I was placed in a undeserved urban neighborhood, and paired with a partner organization in that community. This organization matched students with a case load of individuals in the community. It was a lot more case management as opposed to more hands-on nursing care.

Because a primary goal of our host organization and a major problem in this neighborhood is combating social isolation our project for the term centered around this issue. We worked with residents with in the community and existing organizations to conduct a neighborhood wide survey for a proposed program to address social isolation with in low-income housing blocks. By working with residents and existing organizations we were able to rely on their social and professional networks to gain access to individuals and places we might not have otherwise reached for our survey.

If you feel like you are struggling/ not sure what you should be doing - I highly recommend reaching out to your instructor for guidance sooner rather than later.

we have a project on this semester. Doing a "windshield survery"

it sounds like the biggest waste of time on earth to me. I thought doing "concept maps" was busy work until our instructor assigned this project to us this semester. Thank God students in my program who did Study Abroad only have to do like 20 of the recommended 75 hours of this practicum.

Basically we have to drive around our city looking at the environment and occasionally look at animals in the street if they pass by and make an assessment. These people like we are some type of Mayor of the City or something. Lmao

My community health rotation was much more structured. I was assigned to home health and to a specific nurse. They ended up only being part time and couldn't get me the hours I needed so I supplemented with hours at a clinic sponsored by my school. The clinic was a bridge program for the underserved in the community to help them now but also transition them into a more permanent health care option. We did a lot of school physicals, basic sick visits, hypertension and diabetes education, and the majority of our patient base spoke Spanish.

One patient I recall needed a hernia repair but couldn't afford it. On exam he was found to have hypertension and diabetes, both of which he was aware of but choosing to "manage with diet and exercise" which was not successfully occurring. We had a university to refer him to for the hernia surgery that would adjust pricing based on his financial abilities but before than could happen his hypertension and diabetes needed to be brought under control. We started him on meds, gave him a glucose monitor and provided education, and scheduled follow up appointments to monitor his progress.

That's the essence of my community health experience really. I showed up and worked, wrote weekly "journal" entries following a rubric about my experiences, did an assessment of my community placement, and did an education project for my target community. Very structured, not wander around talking to people in the community about their needs.

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well!

I am currently doing my community rotation in nursing school and to be quite honest I feel lost. To the community/ public health nurses out there and to those who have enjoyed and even fell in love with this rotation, I would really appreciate your tips/ insight!

What exactly is it that I need to know about the community? I don't know how to put this in better words but like how do I get to know the community? Who do I talk to? I mean I can't spend 8-12 hrs per clinical day to go to every single house and ask all of them the same questions (Or is that actually what I have to do?). How do I 'get to know' the community efficiently? Who do I need to see? What kind of questions do I ask to the people? Where do I go to meet these people? As a nurse/ nursing student, what kind of questions do I need to ask myself that would help me understand the status of this community health-wise? Like how many clinics are in the area, mainly what age group visits the clinic, are there health plans for the public- are these the kinds of questions I should ask? Bottom line is, I don't know who to meet, what questions to ask and I don't know where to go or how to start planning for this.

I have never been an outside kind of person so to be honest this is really hard for me. Asking a bunch of questions to a lot of people (heck even knowing which people to ask is hard) has never been a strong point of mine- English is also not my first language so I worry a lot when I speak. I am ready to do all of that- walk a lot, spend time with the people from the community, ask them questions because I really do want to learn. I know I would stutter and be nervous but I am prepared and willing to learn. So please, if there's anyone out there willing to help or has any kind of experience/ tips to share, please do so. I would really appreciate every single thing! Thank you very much!

Community/Public Health Nursing will always feel foreign to students with traditional healthcare experience. So, don't feel like this is something that is exclusive to you, nor should you feel threatened by it. It's common for students to feel completely lost in their first weeks in this course. It may help to keep in mind that you can apply the same nursing process in a hospital setting (ADPIE) to a community health setting. Your methods, tools and strategies will just be a little different. So, instead of just focusing on medically-related factors to assess a patient, you will be broadening your assessment to social determinants of health that influence the community in which your patient lives. Your instructors should teach you what you need to know, and can answer all the concerns you raised.

I can empathize that you've never been an "outside" person and that this experience will be challenging for you. However, the "outside" world is where your patients live, work and play. So, understanding their living conditions and challenges can go a long way to helping them improve their health. In terms of talking to people, my suggestion is to just be humble and respectful. It's okay to say that you're a student and that you're still learning. That's what you would do in any other clinical rotation. Spend a lot of your time in building relationships with the people you serve and with your fellow staff. That leads to trust, which is the foundation for doing anything in community/public health.

Hope that helps!