Australian Family Assessment

Nurses often use the aspect of time as an excuse not to conduct a family interview, however, Wright and Leahey (2009) clearly demonstrate how integrating families into patient care does not have to consume a lot of time. Using the Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) and Calgary Family Intervention Model (CFIM), a family interview can be organized and conducted in a less amount of time, and end in a greater understanding of the patient and family. The CFAM contains three major categories including structural, developmental, and functional, which can be used to assess a family or help them address a specific health issue (Wright & Leahey, 2009). The CFIM uses assessments focusing on strengths, meaning that it uses the strengths of each individual family member, and the unit as a whole to provide positive interventions. This allows the interventions to focus on encouraging the family, rather than their deficits or dysfunctions (Wright and Leahey, 2009). During the 15-minute interview, it is suggested to have the entire family present so that the interviewer is able note reactions and collaborate with each family member, thus providing the most acceptable plan of care for the entire family.

According to Stanhope and Lancaster (2008) “Each family is an unexplained mystery, unique in the ways it meets the needs of its members and society” (p. 550). Family nursing is a special field that involves the nurse and family working together to achieve progress for the family and its members in adjusting to transitions and responding to health and illness. The Friedman Family Assessment Model serves as a guide in family nursing to identify the developmental stage of the family, environmental data, family structure, composition, and functions as well as how the family manages stress and their coping mechanisms. From this data, three nursing diagnoses with interventions are developed.

Family Assessment The family chosen for this assignment are family friends who agreed to conduct the interview and discuss any health issues they had. Because some of the questions were fairly invasive into their private lives, no names are given. There are five members in the family, and they all participated in the interview. Questions are based on the eleven functional health patterns.

Using the CFAM to conduct a family interview, I identified a nursing diagnoses and interventions for the family I interviewed.

The health of a family is a vital part of how that family interacts with one another and how each individual of the family will function in society, later teaching their children about a healthy lifestyle or lack thereof. The family health assessment helps to identify risk factors and potential dysfunction (Edelman, 2014) I interviewed a single parent family home about their health and how they perceive it. This family is an all-male family, an athletic seventeen year old boy getting ready for his senior year, a twenty year old young man, and a hardworking, dedicated, overweight father.

-A succinct philosophy of family nursing is seen in The Association for the Care of Children’s Health standards stating the expectation for healthcare providers to facilitate family/professional collaboration at all levels of care, and to recognizing family as the constant in the patient’s life whereas the healthcare providers will fluctuate (p.40, 2003).

Think back to when you were a child and you became ill. All you wanted was the protection and guidance of your mother to take care of you. If you had older siblings, maybe they were the ones that helped make you feel better. Even as we grow older, we rely on our family for support when we are not well. When a family member is ill, it is not just that one person that suffers. When an illness strikes a family member, it oftentimes includes the whole family to deal with the illness also. There are different approaches that a nurse can utilize when dealing with family nursing. Approaches include family as context, as a client, system and a component of society. In this paper, I will discuss where and how these approaches are utilized.

A comprehensive family assessment provides a foundation to promote family health (Edelman & Mandle, 2011). 1987 Marjorie Gordon purposed 11 functional health patterns to use for guidance in order to facilitate nurses to have a frame work for the family assessment in. Gordon’s 11 functional health patterns help organizes basic family assessment information. This standardized format will guide nurses to complete the family assessment using system approaches, which will identify a patient’s

As the society we live in continues to transform, nurses need a comprehensive tool to assess family’s health patterns. Family units are influenced by environment, biological, mental, social and spiritual factors. Assessing these areas for health promotion and disease prevention will take all of these influences into consideration (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). A priority to a family focused health assessment approach is to adequately question, assess and examine these areas. A tool to assist a family health assessment using a family focused approach is Gordon’s 11 Functional Patterns. This paper will use these 11

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate one family's experience of living with multiple chronic illnesses into the Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) and Rolland's Chronic Health Challenge Framework. CFAM was developed by Dr. Lorraine M. Wright, a professor Emeritus of nursing and by Dr. Maureen Leahey, a manager of a mental health outpatient program both have over 25 years experience while still managing to supervise, teach, consult, write, and maintain a part-time clinical practice in individual, couple, and family therapy (Moxie, 2007). CFAM allows nurses to assess families during interviews. CFAM is a multidimensional framework consisting of three major categories: structural, dimensional and functional. (Wright & Leahey, 2005)

The family has various functions that include teaching members’ values, morals and beliefs as they relate to health practices. Health can be defined as a complete state of wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease. Gordon’s functional health patterns are a methodology developed by Marjorie Gordon in 1987 to be used as a guide to establish a comprehensive nursing database (Kriegler & Harton, 1992). Gordon’s eleven functional health patterns are; health perception/ health

The purpose of this paper is to display how such assessment is essential not on an individual basis, but rather on a larger scale in relation to family nursing. Family nursing “centers on the family as a unit of care, addressing family needs in response to a member’s illness or threat to health, rather than focusing on the individual. An understanding of families’ needs at particular developmental stages, how they communicate and function, and an ability to undertake a family assessment is foundational knowledge for family nursing” (St John, 2009, p.6). Often, nurses encounter the families of their individual patients on a daily basis, yet family assessments are not performed. This is because nurses often feel there is little time to engage families effectively, and in fact lack of time, has been identified by nurses as the primary barrier to engaging families (Kaakinen, 2015, p.109). Evidence based practice however, has proven that “a 15 minute, or even shorter, family interview can be purposeful, effective, informative, and even healing” (Wright, 2013, p.264). This 15 minute interview has been adopted in many acute care settings in involves five key components; manners, therapeutic conversation, key questions, commendation, and the genogram. These ideas represent the theoretical underpinning and are a condensed version of the Calgary Family Assessment Model (Wright, 2013). This model is large, but can be customized and adapted to the function of each individual

The Family Crucible is a story about the Brice family who is recommended by Claudia’s psychiatrist to go to family therapy due to the fact that she has not been making any progress in individual psychotherapy. The Brice family comes in to meet with Dr. Carl Whitaker and Dr. Augustus Napier, who co-facilitate family therapy throughout the entirety of the book.

Different assessment examines different features of an individual, or similar assessments examine similar features in different ways. Three assessments that regard family conditions and that are considered important are, the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES III), the Family Assessment Device (FAD), and the Self-report Family Inventory (SFI).

Using Gordon’s functional health patterns to assess a family will guide the nurse in developing a comprehensive nursing assessment that is holistic in nature. Gordon’s functional health patterns are founded on 11 principles that are incorporated within the nursing practice. These 11 principles serve as a framework for a thorough nursing assessment in which to build a holistic and individual family care plan (Grand Canyon University, 2011). The author has developed family-focused questions for each of the 11 principles and utilized these questions as a tool to assess her own family. This paper will summarize the family assessment that was performed by the author and discuss two wellness nursing diagnoses that