Community Nursing and Public Health

Rural Health & Legal Nursing

Nurses are the health workers most frequently found providing primary health care services in rural communities throughout the world. In these settings, often with limited resources and far from professional support systems, nurses may encounter ethical dilemmas quite different from those experienced by their colleagues in urban hospital settings. Consider the following example from a remote island community. A young nurse with two years’ experience in an urban hospital is posted to a remote village. In this country there are very few doctors, so nurses diagnose and treat common health problems.