Philippines Community Health Nursing, Thesis Paper Example

The Philippines live in the Republic of the Philippines. The country is in Southeast Asia in terms of location. It is in the west of the Pacific Ocean. The community has over 92 million people according to the latest population census. This makes it the 12th most populous community around the world. With such a great number, it means that the community does require high provision of services including healthcare. With many conditions of health deteriorating and incurable diseases emerging all over the globe community health care takes a stride in the respective communities. This research paper focuses on the Philippine community health nursing explicitly guiding into the ordeal facing the community.

The Health status of Philippine population stands out as a vulnerable situation within the community. The population’s health care varies a great deal. There is the non-existent and the excellent services within the respective regions of the community. Most of the healthcare comes from the private health care providers. They take up sixty percent of the health care national burden for the population. According to Health Alliance for Democracy, in the year 2006, there were total expenditures from the population on health rating at 3.8% of GDP. Out of the total 67.1% was originally from private expenditures. Only 32.9% of the GDP was from government healthcare services. It means that the private sector takes the role of healthcare provision a very dangerous situation for such a country with large population (George, 1996).

From health department epidemiological data within the community, there were some external sources of health care rating 2.9% of the total. About 6.1% represented the Health expenditures from the government side for health care spending for the entire community. Per capita expenditure in total was at average exchange rate of US$ 52. From governmental sources, there has been allocation of P28 billion in the National Health Budget estimated at 310 pesos (US$7) per person. Even with the government’s effort to control the situation and handle the community healthcare, the problem still reigns and requires intervention from the private sector (Elisa, 1977).

Asthma is a major problem is the Philippines community. The community health nursing has had a major controversial moment in handling cases of asthma outbreak. There can be major consequences relating to asthma outbreak in the community. Due to over population in the region, the disease is likely to spread faster within the community members. Because of the few available medical services, the private sectors being the main providers of health services can be overwhelmed by the prevailing circumstances. Death rate is postulated to go high increasing the mortality rate in the region. Because of asthma outbreak, there are normally restricted movements. This is a negative aspect within the community because the activities of the day halt and the economic conditions of the community worsen.

The community education program is what the community needs to control the adverse of the outbreak. The nurses have a duty to facilitate this program to aid the community in the way forward controlling the outbreak. The program can be done to the patients within medical institutions to raise their awareness, health professionals as well as the public in general to portray the seriousness of asthma as a chronic disease. The other input to the program is facilitating the symptoms recognition by patients and the public. The effective control is ideal in partnership encouragement among patients and health professionals using the modern treatment or the relative education programs. The nurses can make this program work in medical associations, community programs, voluntary health organizations, health professionals all aimed at enhancing the quality patient’s life.

The Philippine community has great resources in health care. Typically, the practice in healthcare settings for community includes home care, community health centers and public health departments. The problem arises with the identification and usage of services offered in the respective regions within the community. In 2001, the community had over 1,700 hospitals built for service provision. Out of this 40 percent, hospitals were government run. The rest 60 was from the private sector.

The severity of conditions is varying from respective individual groups of people. The Cardiovascular disease estimates at 25 percent among the reported deaths. According to other official estimates, there were 1,965 cases of (HIV) reported in the year 2003. This shows that there is still some negligence in using community health service even with a huge effort of building hospitals and other facilities. The community currently holds the number of people living positive at 9,400 people and the rates are increasing drastically (Elisa, 1977).

Life expectancy within the population rates at 71.09 years. The females take 74.15 years while the males estimate at 68.17 years. It is because of the healthcare related problems that the life expectancy has gone down. Many people are dying at young age following critical illness. Dying of old age has become history in the making a situation that needs urgent attention (George, 1996). The Philippine population holds a great number of people in the healthcare provision. An estimated 90,370 physicians are present among the community members. This is roughly one per every 833 people. The community also has 480,910 nurses as well as 43,220 dentists. It is therefore, not in dire need of outsourcing for more physicians since there are already enough within the country. It is still not clear why most people do not practice the healthcare provision professionally but there are still many factors. The community continues to live in inadequate healthcare services yet they have the resources within the community members. These factors are explicit and have a base. Retention of these skilled practitioners has become the major problem within the community. An estimated 70% of the nurses graduating from the community universities move abroad and leave the country. In fact, the community if famous for nurses all over the world.

The figure below represents the community genogram. It represents the Philippines Community health provisions:

CHW- Community Health Workers

LHP- Local Health Providers

PuHW- Public Health Workers

MHW- Migrating Health Workers

There are major issues underlying the community. A community with such resources base should not struggle in health care provision. In fact, it should be the leading community in terms of health care population. There should be excess supply of experts in respective fields and the rates of death because of respective diseases should be low. This sows a major problem. The problem is huge and ought to get a proper handling in an appropriate manner (Rifkin, 1985). The nurses leave the country in search of greener pastures. Mostly, they move into the United States. The country provides fast working permits for such talents. It absorbs thousands of these talents in the system. Over 11 million Filipinos free Philippines in the past fifteen years. This is including some of them who have had citizenship in USA. After the US liberalized the immigration laws, thousands of Philippines came into the country. Over sixty percent of these people were nurses in search of new venture. The number of nurses in the United States with a Filipino ancestry has continued to grow substantially. It is reaching 3.1 million. This is as per the reports from the 2007 United States Census Bureau. The bureau reportedly said that nurses from Philippines immigrating to the country the second largest group compared to other groups with Mexico being the first. It is therefore a disheartening part of loosing brains and draining talents into another country. The healthcare for the community continues to go down because of such heavy losses (George, 1996).

However, most of these immigrants do not work within their career. They take up jobs in other manual work yet well paying. They would rather take such opportunities than go back to their community and suffer unemployment. The high rate of unemployment and high number of graduates hitting the market serves as a major challenge to the community. Unless the community does much on these issues, the graduates will still pursue other career jobs outside the country. The hard economic times are challenging dependence has been challenged (Elisa, 1977).

The community has great opportunities for all these graduates. Taking up the health care profession, not much emphasis is in play to support the graduates. The government’s government is low and serves only a few. The rates of unemployment for the healthcare graduates shoot up every year. There is need for the government to create employment for the graduates. Keeping them in the country is the ideal thing to do. It is opening up opportunities as they pursue their career in health care.

Some of these graduates move to other countries to further their studies in healthcare. In the process, they are absorbed into the respective country’s system. Philippines community therefore looses thousands of potential healthcare service givers every year. It is upon the government to straighten up the education system. This is on attempt of giving the graduates a chance to pursue higher learning. It will all be useful for the community in the future. Nurturing talents is the idea here as well as increasing professionalism in the healthcare industry (Rifkin, 1985).

There is great need to support the organizations and projects within the community. The organizational attributes that are great supports for the healthcare optimal practice include program design, flexibility in funding, clear organizational vision, as well as coordinated planning of public health across jurisdictions as well as strong leadership within the community. These elements will rescue the situation in the Philippine community. Integrating the community-based concept of the relative medical practice to the overall medical curriculum is a great step into saving the Philippines healthcare dilemma. The link between Philippine health situation to the institution’s medical curriculum is also ideal to help reveal to the potential graduates of what they expect after the studies. Re-orientation in the support system within the school-hospital would be ideal in promotion of viability of practicing community medicine and healthcare. The concept is to aid in the promotion of the healthcare conditions giving way to the young doctors in the profession (George, 1996).

Philippines communities once interacted with the Chinese. Because of trading with the Chinese, individuals from the community took up some elements of the Chinese culture. The cultural influences have a great deal of affecting nursing care within the community. Some of these individuals have been so much into herbal medicines that they neglect the medications from the modern hospitals. Although not many of these cases show up, there are still individuals who die of extreme illnesses having neglected the hospitals. Religion is also part of the community where few individuals have their beliefs of supernatural healing. However, this is not most the case for the Philippines entire community but only to individuals (Rifkin, 1985).

There are great steps taken in the country coding a rescue into the extreme conditions. In the Philippines, community medicine has been a major input into the community health work. The practitioners count their huge achievements as well as successes. Education and training has been on offer to the local medical practitioners to improve their efficiency. The respective programs are still on management by mothers who have undergone training as qualified community health workers. They still have great experience in using various modalities for healthcare and treatment. This ranges from conventional, alternative and traditional healthcare. There has been a great negotiation for the Health workers with other people’s organizations as well as the local government officials making up greater and higher budgets for health care within the community (Elisa, 1977).

A community-oriented curriculum in medicine was of great use. Its development came from Global initiatives with the 1966 Conference on Medicine. World Health Assembly has also been on the verge of supporting the community by issuing official statement all for enhancing community orientation. The major challenge comes in with the community looking down on these community med practitioners as their source of healthcare. In the medical organization, most of these practitioners have not had acceptance, receive denigration by peers as well as colleagues while still lacking support systems required from school-hospitals. The thing is that most have given up and the community faces troubles in the medical field.

References

Elisa V. (1977) Community health nursing in the Philippines: Merriam School & Office Supplies Corp

George M. (1996) Community Public Health Nursing in the Philippine Islands: Public Health Nations Health 771–777.

Rifkin, Susan B (1985) Health planning and community participation: case studies in South-east Asia: London: Croon Helm.