Community Nursing

A nurse is a healthcare professional who, in collaboration with other members of a health care team, is responsible for: treatment, safety, and recovery of acutely or chronically ill individuals; health promotion and maintenance within families, communities and populations; and, treatment of life-threatening emergencies in a wide range of health care settings. Nurses perform a wide range of clinical and non-clinical functions necessary to the delivery of health care, and may also be involved in medical and nursing research.

Faith Community Nursing, also known as Parish Nursing, Congregational Nursing or Church Nursing, is a movement of over 10,000 registered nurses, primarily in the United States and Canada, but growing in numbers in the United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, is the intentional integration of the practice of faith with the practice of faith with the practice of nursing so that people can achieve wholeness in, with, and through the community of faith in which faith community nurses serve.

Faith Community Nursing (FCN) is recognized as a specialty nursing practice. Faith Community Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice was approved by the American Nurses Association in 2005 and define the specialty as "...the specialized practice of professional nursing that focuses on the intentional care of the spirit as part of the process of promoting holistic health and preventing or minimizing illness in a faith community." (American Nurses Association, 2005, Faith Community Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, Silver Springs, MD: Author, p1)

The Caribbean has joined the community of Parish Nursing and Health Care Ministry with the launching of Health Care Ministry in The Bahamas. It began with an initial course spanning a three-week period and brought together nurses from various denominations and they were commissioned on 27 February 2005.

Initially, the Canadian and Australian models of Parish Nursing were introduced to The Bahamas as an extension of the Pastoral Care Ministries of Diocese 2000 & beyond, a programme of the Anglican Diocese of The Bahamas and Turks & Caicos Islands.

To date, we have over sixty persons trained and actively engaged in the ministry as either Parish Nurses or Health & Wellness Carers. Since the ministry began in 2005 it has grown steadily and was known as the Anglican Diocesan Health Care Ministry [Parish Nursing] Council. However, effective 7 March 2008 the name changed to the Ecumenical Health Care Ministry Council.

It is intended that there will be continued training and that the programme will spread throughout the Commonwealth of The Bahamas and the Caribbean. To this end, the ministry will be recognized by the Bahamas Christian Council and by extension the Caribbean Council of Churches. [Ecumenical Health Care Ministry, Bahamas]