Just what do we mean by community? Conceptualizations from the field

The community is often part of the ‘taken‐for‐granted’ or assumed world of the community nurse. Community health nursing literature has a range of theoretical explanations of what the community is. A conception of ‘community as client’ is also a basic notion in the community health nursing literature. However, it is less clear whether these theoretical perspectives are useful, or which theoretical concepts assume the most importance in practice. This grounded theory research explores how 17 excellent practising community health nurses from a variety of community practice settings conceptualized and operationalized their notion of the community. In‐depth interviews were carried out and fully transcribed. Data were analysed to identify participants' definitions of the community and how they described their interactions with the communities they themselves worked in and with. Participants understood the community at a global, abstract level in terms of systems thinking. However, the communities with which they worked were described in terms of geography, provision of resources, as a network and consisting of target groups. Data were also examined for examples of participants describing the communities they worked with as a ‘client’ or an entity. While there were instances where this occurred, this was by no means universal. The most important contextual factor in determining a community as a ‘client’ was found to be where community members were connected. Where a population was not connected, participants focused their attention on the next largest connected unit, usually a group or family.