What is Community Nursing?

If you’d like a job where no two days are the same, where you’re able to help people to become more independent in their daily lives and have the chance to build close relationships and have more influence on continuity of care, then community nursing or district nursing with Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) could be perfect for you.

Community Nurses play a crucial role in the primary healthcare team. They are qualified nurses who provide care and support for patients out of hospital, mostly in patients’ own homes, in clinics based in GP surgeries or within health centres.

Nurses within the community use their clinical expertise to deliver top-quality community care to help to keep hospital admissions down, freeing up beds for critical cases and preventing long admission times. From helping people with long-term illnesses to looking after those with physical conditions, working as a Community Nurse is an extremely rewarding career path.

What’s the difference between a District Nurse and a Community Nurse?

• The role of a District Nurse is to provide care to housebound patients by performing regular home visits. These visits may occur once a day or multiple times, depending on the level of care required by a patient. As these visits take place away from the secure environment of a hospital, it is the duty of a District Nurse to perform thorough risk assessments upon every visit, ensuring the safety of both themselves, the patient and any community-based nurses or support workers who are required to treat the client. Individually tailored healthcare plans must be devised and delivered in order to best suit the needs of the patient, as well as their family or carer/s, whilst care and support are carefully monitored to ensure the patient is receiving the correct treatment to meet their unique needs.
• A Community Nurse also performs their duties in patients’ homes or from a healthcare centre and is responsible for performing many of the same duties as a District Nurse. These include basic care (checking temperature, blood pressure and breathing), wound management, administering injections, setting up intravenous drips and assisting doctors with examinations and medical procedures. Community Nurses are also able to provide vital information to patients, their families and carer/s, whilst emergency support may also be required in cases when a patient is suffering cardiac arrest or a stroke. This demonstrates the many hats a Community Nurse must do in their line of care.

As a Community Nurse at MPFT, your duties could include:

• Administering medication
• Taking blood samples
• Cleaning and caring for complex wounds
• Delivering palliative care
• Caring for ulcers
• Working with other healthcare professionals to deliver co-ordinated medical assistance

Similar to a Community Nurse, as a District Nurse at MPFT, your duties could include:

• Visiting patients with a wide variety of nursing needs in their own home
• Making decisions about individual patients’ care
• Managing your own case load and carrying out a range of clinical activities
• Dealing with a variety of information and managing daily team priorities, providing leadership and direction
• Ensuring collaboration of the team with other health professionals
• Making sure patients and their families are given the support they need 

How do you become a Community Nurse or District Nurse with MPFT?

To become a Community Nurse or District Nurse, you will be a registered adult, child, mental health or learning disability nurse. You should also be able to provide clinical references, have a current NMC Pin, drive and own a car, and be able to provide evidence of vaccinations. To excel in the role, you’ll also need to have certain personal qualities too, such as:

• The ability to work independently and make clinical decisions alone within environments that are not always clinically safe
• Adaptability
• Excellent organisational skills
• Confidence when working under pressure
• Empathy
• Clear communication skills
• The ability to cope in emotional situations

And if you’re looking for career progression, community nursing is also an excellent pathway through to becoming a Band 7 District Nurse, a highly paid role in demand across the UK.

Community nursing enables you to achieve a work-life balance that’s right for you

Community nursing roles can help you balance the benefits of a highly rewarding nursing job with your personal life commitments. Medacs Healthcare has thousands of new Community Nurse and District Nurse roles every day that you can apply for. And, as a preferred supplier of medical professionals to the NHS, you can have sight of many community nursing jobs before anyone else when registered with Medacs.