Community Wellness Program for Elderly Public Housing Residents

Program Overview

The article by Aselton (2011) describes an elderly adult wellness program that provides a practical learning opportunity for nursing students in the context of delivering valuable health services to members of a community in need. Specifically, a wellness program was incorporated into a public housing community by setting up nursing students to deliver general forms of health, wellness, and quality-of-life support to elderly residents of a public housing facility. It consists of initial assessments conducted by students at the beginning of every semester to identify the perceived needs of the residents. That phase allows residents to communicate their interests and requests for services and benefits.

Health Education and Student Activities

The nursing students devise health education presentations based on the interests of the residents, and they promote and lead exercise classes and other recreational activities. A community room in the building is dedicated to the program. Some of the more important classes are those that teach safety and fall prevention to reduce potential injuries and health and safety threats to the population. The students also conduct home visits to check on residents who are unable to make it to the community room in person, and they deliver certain services on a one-to-one basis in that way.

Medication Review and Chronic Disease Support

The program features a medication review process that allows students to monitor the medications being taken by residents, to ensure compliance with prescription instructions, and to educate residents about their medications — including recognizing contraindicated combinations. The students also provide assistance in managing chronic conditions by monitoring symptoms, and they help negotiate the resolution of disagreements among residents.

Reflective Response: Value of Community-Based Nursing

In some respects, the article illustrates that the essence of modern health care need not be restricted to clinical care, although clinical care is certainly a crucial component of contemporary health care delivery. The opportunity to contribute to the health, safety, and welfare of a vulnerable patient population is likely as valuable to the development of good nurses as any other conceivable practicum or practical program. With a focus on scientific medicine sometimes dominating the delivery side of health care, programs such as these help reinforce some of the characteristics and strengths that are valuable in professional nurses and other health care providers.

Another important aspect of the program is that it provides support of the type whose need can typically be overlooked because clinicians have such limited time for non-medical issues or patient concerns. In many cases, low-income patient populations who rely on publicly provided medical services have no source of assistance with non-medical issues. In this respect, the program is particularly valuable precisely because it functions as a form of preventive medicine — an approach that the American health care system still too often neglects. By allowing health care professionals to educate patients about issues of specific concern to their health, the program helps prevent, or at least reduce the likelihood of, certain kinds of health and safety threats. Similarly, by providing a medication review system and ongoing monitoring of chronic diseases and symptoms, the program allows residents to receive appropriate intervention at the earliest possible stage of disease, rather than after acute symptoms manifest and complications develop that require more serious forms of intervention.

Reference

Aselton, P. "Using a Wellness Program in Public Housing for Community Nursing Clinical Experiences." Journal of Nursing Education, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2011): 163.