This document compares and contrasts community health nursing and institutional nursing. Community health nursing involves providing care in the community where people live and work, such as homes, farms, schools and clinics. It focuses on primary care and serving the overall community. Institutional nursing provides care in hospitals and involves secondary and tertiary care for sick individuals. The nature of care differs between the two settings, with community health nursing emphasizing comprehensive and continuous promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative care, while institutional nursing focuses mainly on diagnostic and therapeutic episodic care when people are sick.