Family Assessment

Father gets up once during night to empty his bladder and mother reports problems with bladder leakage from stress incontinence(Johnson family, personal communication, June 24, 2012).

Family health assessment is an integral part of the formula used in creating a customized plan of care for the families’ health care. Family health assessment is also a tool that can be used to identify and evaluate the family’s health concerns, their life style and also helping families make good decisions regarding their family’s health. Family’s perception towards health and health promotion could be very different and unique, which makes the Family health assessment even more challenging for the nurses and health care professionals. Nurse’s have a moral obligation towards the society to help them promote their families health. The

They are on a regular diet with few restrictions on fried foods and fat intake. The children eat school lunch and the parents from outside restaurant choices. Mom tries to cook a meal a day after work or they seldom eat Subway or Pizza Hut. No variation in weight gain or weight loss reported. They try to eat dinner as a family at home on a regular basis. However, this was not feasible all of the time due to dad’s late night work hours and CH basketball practices after school. They generally get 6-7 hours of sleep per night and denied any sleep deprivation. No exercise program has been implemented by this family. CH is the only physically, athletic member. DH stated that he likes to ride his bike. The children are active in Sunday school and participate in summer camp.

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

While reading The Family Crucible, the authors made it feel like I was watching a life-time television series. There were several high points and low points during the family therapy session that left me unsure of how the show would end. This book takes you on a journey using family counseling to help a family heal and communicate better with one another. I thought it was interesting how this systematic therapy took place in a time where therapy was looked at as taboo. Many times in that era family therapy was not an option. The main focus was on the family member with the issue and not on the parents or other family members. In the book the authors used different theories and approaches during the counseling sessions which were quite interesting. This process after time enabled the family to look at the journey they were on in order to understand how the family, as a whole, should function.

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 Psychosocial Family Tree assessment requires the input of known, important characteristics of family members. It strives to get a better understanding of an individual’s psychological development by analyzing certain characteristics that the individual’s family members have. The individual fills out the assessment to the best of their abilities, including characteristics of the big five factors, occupation, education, etc. This assessment uses the L-Data approach and the qualitative method. The reliability, validity, and generalizability of the assessment are evaluated to conclude the degree of effectiveness. The results concluded that the Psychosocial Family Tree is low in reliability, moderate in construct validity, and low in generalization. The findings provide an insight to an individual’s personality and awareness to specific patterns of behaviors or characteristics.

The Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) is a familiar template for nurses to use to help intellectualise and organize data collected from working with families. It can be used to both collect data from a family assessment, but also may be beneficial when helping a family address a specific health issue. The CFAM can be seen as a branching diagram with three main categories: structural, developmental, and functional levels (Wright and Leahey 2009, Chapter 3).

While interviewing a families health patterns, there were many areas assessed. Several questions have been asked regarding numerous aspects of their life. These family focused questions will help us explore into their health, cognition and overall wellbeing. Based on the responses, a family diagnosis was formulated. In this paper, we will explore the questions and answers that have been provided.

The assessment was done on a family of five. The father’s initials are K.M., mother’s initials are J.M., oldest son is M.M., middle son is T.M., and youngest daughter is E.M. The father is 29 years old, the mother is 32 years old, the oldest son is 9, the middle son is 4, and the youngest daughter is 8 months old. The mother had the oldest son with a previous marriage, but the child was adopted by her current husband and the previous father of the child has had no contact with child. Technically the family is nontraditional but they appear traditional since the adoption has made it so. They all live together under the same roof. Both parents work full time in and around the community. They like fill their time with hobbies and spending time as a family. The family eats all meals together except during work/school hours. They spend time doing homework and reading together. Due to the business of their schedules, the weekends are mostly spent with each other or extended family members.

Family health assessment is a collection of subjective and objective data of a health status of the family. Mr. and Mrs. Schulz were interviewed for the family health assessment. Schulz family has four members in the family. They are dad-Michael, mom-Lori, and two daughters Jessica and Rachel. Gordon’s functional health patterns will be used to do the family health assessment. Gordons 11 functional health patterns are health perception-health management pattern, Nutritional-metabolic pattern, elimination pattern, activity-exercise pattern, sleep-rest pattern, cognitive-perceptual pattern, self-perception-self-concept pattern, role-relationships pattern, sexuality-reproductive pattern, coping-stress tolerance pattern, and value belief pattern (Edelman & Kudzma, 2014, p. 184). This paper will summarize the findings for each functional health pattern of Schulz family, and present three wellness and family nursing diagnosis at the end.

I have enjoyed reading your post, Brittany. I agree with you that conducting a family assessment in the family home allow the nurse to form a better understanding of the family needs and issues (Doreenwestera, 2010). In addition to that, families are more apt to express their feelings within the comfort of their homes. I agree with you that a family home assessment allows the nurse to examine the family as a unit. Moreover, a home assessment enables the nurse to observe families as they progress through the families’ development stages (Doreenwestera, 2010). Due to family assessment inside the home, the nurse will be able to observe children as they progress though their natural development stages. Moreover, a family assessment allows the nurse

A family health assessment is an important tool in formulating a health care plan for a family. This paper will discuss the nurse’s role in family assessment and how this task is performed. A nurse has an important role in health promotion. To perform these tasks the author has chosen a nuclear family. By the use of family focused open ended questions, 11 functional health patterns were covered. This principle is known as the Gordon’s functional health patterns. This assessment tool included 11 systematic principles for data collection of the family, and assists the nurses to develop a nursing diagnosis and appropriate interventions. Using Gordon’s functional health patterns, this paper will summarize

When starting my shift on the Labor and Delivery unit, I think about how I am going to identify, assess, support and teach my laboring family. Yes, I believe it is an unforgettable life event that I want my patients and their family to treasure forever. “A key distinguishing factor of family assessment is that it looks at the interrelationships between family members and how these relationships impact on individuals within the family” (Sally Kendall, 2010). When I first enter the room of a family in labor, I identify the vibe of the room. The strengths, weakness, and needs of the family have to be assessed. I assess the faces, behaviors, emotions, body language, speech, and interrelationships of the family. The patient