State of health and life of community nurses in Hungary

Abstract

Community (district) nurses play a very important role in basic health care. Their work and responsibility are not only to help the family doctors' work but also to protect and restore the good state of health of the inhabitants.The object of the research is to survey the community nurses' state of health, circumstances of life and occupational environment, furthermore to explain their nursing, preventive and health-improving mission because in the scope of the National Public Health Programme, district nurses can also do a lot in the interest of achieving the aims and realizing the tasks.The basic methods of the research are mail survey and comparative statistic analysis. An aimed study was made, such a qualitative inquiry which gives information about a concrete population in accordance with the aim and type of the research, utilizing the secondary information, too. On the basis of a list, the National Basic Health Care Institution (OALI) made a random sampling with 2000 nurses from the basic multitude of 5854 district nurses. In the scope of the mail survey, 2000 questionnaires were sent in the company of a request and directing letter. Altogether 768 questionnaires have come back, which is the 38 percent of the aimed sample and the 13 percent of the basic multitude. N=768.According to the survey, district nurses mostly have secondary school or OKJ nurses (technical school) qualification, overwhelming majority of them have been working in the field of public health for at least 10 years. Most of them have written contract of employment, they work mostly in the legal status of being employed. This year, 72 percent of them have taken part in further vocational training. The characteristic features of district nurses' work are the expert storing and managing of medicines; the preventing, screening and care; controlling of registering and administration. Although district nurses perform health-caring and health-improving activity, their independence is generally restricted in this work. Last year only 48 percent of district nurses took part in such healthcaring and health-improving programme. Community nurses are generally satisfied with the appreciation of their work. According to the most district nurses' opinion more money should have been given for the improving of the state of basic health care and less administration would be enough. In the majority of the cases community nurses qualify their own physical and mental state of health and their human relations as good. Community nurses relatively have a lot of kinds of illnesses and complaints; among others there are the backache that is in connection with the sitting way of life, furthermore the varicose veins of lower limbs. Seventy percent of the answerers do not smoke and the rest of the nurses smoke either only occasionally or regularly. The overwhelming majority of community nurses generally have not taken part in colon tumour or heart-and circulatory diseases screening, which is thought provoking from the point of view of the mediation of health-consciou...