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Primary care has become the focal point of health care reform. For too long primary care has been narrowly conceptualized as office-based care for common problems of individuals. In this article, a nurse practitioner describes a new model for primary care, community partnership primary care (CPPC), which moves beyond typical primary care practice to create what may be a new paradigm for primary care. This proposed new paradigm moves beyond older models of primary care into new dimensions of practice. The CPPC model emphasizes new roles for clinicians and a unique goal to foster the empowerment of individuals, families, and community. Innovative features of the CPPC model include blending a clinical role with a new area of practice called community practice. CPPC emphasizes new, innovative roles for nurse practitioners and nurses in community development and community empowerment activities. A 4-year funded project permitted the development and implementation of the CPPC model in an urban Hispanic community. This article provides an overview of the CPPC model and the initial steps of model implementation.

Increasingly, health professionals must learn to work in new partnership relationships with clients and community to promote health effectively. A partnership requires a transformation of the professional role from chief actor to partner, and the client role from passive recipient to partner. A partnership approach has particular merit in a reformed health care system that increasingly emphasizes active involvement and self-care actions of individuals and families to maintain health and prevent disease. A partnership approach is also important to professionals working with underserved, vulnerable, and/or minority populations. For too long professionals and policymakers have relegated these groups to passive roles in health decision making and action. This article will provide a description of the partnership process as it has been developed and implemented by nurse practitioners in an urban Hispanic community with emphasis on a community partnership. A partnership model is described and compared to the more traditional professional model. A definition and essential criteria for partnership are presented. Finally, a specific example of how the partnership process was implemented at the community level is discussed.

A clinical database will enable nurse practitioners to document and improve characteristics of their practices. This information is vital if nurse practitioners expect to achieve success in the changing U.S. health care system. This article describes the process of creating an encounter form and a related clinical database. Changes made in a family practice clinic that were derived from using a clinical database are presented. Additional uses for a clinical database, such as quality assurance, clinical evaluation, and clinical research, are discussed.

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