Theory of Community Empowerment

Nursing Theory

For the 21st century, I feel that the Theory of Community Empowerment is a model that will work well. When we consider the challenges of health care in the 21st century, we realize that technology advancements and new drugs are doing a lot of the technical work on physical healing, but these are the sorts of remedies that come about only after someone gets sick. Ultimately, medical procedures and drugs are not a pathway to sustainable health. As I understand the Theory of Community Empowerment, one of the most important roles of the nurse is to work with people, connect with them, and then help them to help themselves. We, as a community, are responsible for our own health, for making the right choices that can help us avoid having health problems in the first place.

This theory has been expounded upon at length in nursing literature. To reduce disease and ailment, we must begin by empowering patients to take more responsibility and make better choices. Many people become disempowered, for a wide range of reasons, and the result is that they are forced to look for intervention at a stage when outcomes may be less optimal. As our society pushes more for preventative measures and cost savings, keeping people from getting ill in the first place becomes more important. Rappaport (1987) highlighted the role that communities play both in setting norms and providing support, and the use of community and nurses will help people to make better choices that will have a positive effect on their long-term health.

These ideas were more fully developed into a nursing context by Persily & Hildebrandt (2008). Their concept was based on participatory action research, wherein the researcher is involved directly in the actions. Thus, they learned by doing. The roots of this theory are based on the idea that human beings are affected by their interactions with each other. The community as a whole has the power within it to help improve health. The role of nurses is in part to improve the ability of the community to make better choices and to promote health through individual and community relationships (Persily & Hildebrandt, 2008).

Empowerment theory has long been utilized in nursing, with many scholars understanding the link between education, decision-making and health. When a person feels empowered, in particular through knowledge, to make better choices about his or her health, they often will. When all members of the community have the same level of empowerment, then the community will be self-supporting. Group factors and environmental factors come into play that can help people to improve their health (Fawcett et al., 1995).