Educating the Community through Neighborhood Nursing

My host site position as a Community Health Case Manager is a unique one. While serving at the LaSalle Neighborhood Nursing Center, I go out into the community instead of asking them to come to us in our offices. New to the field of public health, AmeriCorps helped me to realize just how big of an impact public health efforts can make. I work primarily with the senior community and for many of these people transportation is difficult; they mainly rely on shuttles, buses, or other family members whom might provide rides to where they need to go. This restriction makes it more challenging to travel to locations outside of their routine schedules. In response, our nursing team travels to libraries, senior centers, and health fairs to set up blood pressure screenings and health education workshops.  By going into the community, where people go about their daily activities, we are able to reach a much greater population.

Education is a critical part of what we do at the nursing center. Every person we speak with always walk away learning something. During our health screenings we take the patient’s blood pressure, explain what those numbers mean, as well as discuss ways to prevent and manage high blood pressure. For those individuals with high blood pressure, we take extra care to explain to them the importance of taking their blood pressure medication every day. Unfortunately, it is quite common for people to misunderstand the significance of keeping a low blood pressure. I have had several clients  stop taking their medications or neglect to refill their prescriptions, because they didn’t believe they needed the medication anymore.. I saw a young man last week who was on blood pressure medication, and after chatting for a while I realized he hadn’t taken his pressure medication for two weeks because he hadn’t gotten around to ordering new prescription. His pressure during that visit was 150/120. Compare that to the target pressure of 120/80. To put this into perspective, his heart at rest (represented by the bottom number, his diastolic pressure) was working as hard as a healthy heart does when pumping (represented by the top number, his systolic pressure ). Explaining the importance of taking medication properly is one of the first things we talk about with every patient, and the most critical. When a patient is taking their medication properly but their pressure is still high, poor diet is almost always the culprit. After taking their pressure, we often chat with patients about their eating habits. We discuss what exactly in their diets may be increasing their pressure that we could try and moderate; amongst many things, salty foods and caffeine are the most popular indulgences. 

The education we do at the Neighborhood Nursing Center expands beyond just healthy heart education. We do health workshops on many topics, extending from osteoporosis to fall prevention. These workshops and screenings provide the community with a great resource for their health. Not only are they learning about important health topics, they are also given the opportunity to personally ask our nursing team any questions regarding their own medical issues. By stepping out of the office and into the community we are able to connect with people in a way that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
 

This blog post was written by NHC Philadelphia member Katie Kisseberth.
Katie serves as a Community Health Outreach Associate at LaSalle Neighborhood Nursing Center.