It can often be unclear what classes something as community care. The most obvious distinction to make is that between hospital and community care. Hospital care is largely self-explanatory, involving care of patients while they are in hospital. This sort of care is usually short term, with the aim being to get a patient back to full-bodied health and to be able to live as independently as possible once more. While community care will occur back in a patient’s home or community, often with more of a long term sense of care, helping those who are, or find themselves dependent to a certain degree.
For this reason, community care jobs can offer a chance for more of a bond with patients, and have more of a long term interaction with patients than what you can expect in a hospital. Being based within a community is also a very different work environments than that of a hospital. In one sense, it is a lot more sociable, making bonds with not just those you are heping, but other members of the support network based in the community. While at the same time, it can also be more solitary than hospitals, especially in rural areas, as your patients may be spread far apart. So, the time in between visits are much longer than going from bed to bed in a hospital.
In regard to the patients within community care, it is largely those with learning difficulties and other mental health problems and the elderly that benefit from community care. This is largely because it is these groups of people that can feel the most cut off from the community, and will be those who need the most help to be part of the community once again.
This does not mean that patients within community care are all the same. Within a hospital, you would largely be doing similar processes within a certain department. While community care is a lot more about problem solving on a case by case basis. In short, community care is working out a patient’s needs and cooperating with them to find a way they can be met.Community care is a vital part of healthcare. We can see how it is vastly different from what we often think of healthcare consisting of. It also finds itself having to deal with very different problems, that focus more on wellbeing and happiness; with community and the importance of society at the heart of it.