Family Centered Care : A Belief That The Health Care Staff And The Family

Many people have many different definitions of a family. Some include family as the people they live with, some include their entire extended family, and some include friends, neighbors, coaches, and teachers. According to the Vanier Institute (2013), a family is “a combination of two or more persons who are bound together over time by ties of mutual consent, birth, and/or adoption” (para. 2). Whichever way you look at it, families often play a major role in life. It only makes sense that when a person begins to go through a drastic change in life such as illness, the family will be involved. This is why it is important that nurses learn how to provide suitable client and family centered care. They can do this by following the four

Including the client as an expert member of the team creates an enhanced quality of care (Coad, Patel & Murray, 2014). In pediatrics, parents are often at the center of the child’s care. When asked to define what made the client care experience positive, parents stated that sensitivity, empathy and honesty were key factors (Coad, Patel & Murray, 2014). Working in healthcare, nurses can become desensitized to difficult experiences because they deal with them daily. Integrating the client and family as part of the healthcare team, allows the nurse to see the patient and family as a people first. By avoiding using illness as context, and instead using person as context, care will be more holistic (Coad, Patel & Murray, 2014). A family-focused approach helps to ensure that the whole family feels a part of the experience and is valued. In the case of bereavement, family centered care is particularly important. If the family is not included in the care from the start, it can provide barriers for grieving and impact how the family deals with loss (Jones, Contro & Koch, 2014). Nurses have an opportunity to help support the family through the grief process (Jones, Contro & Koch, 2014). Families have a significant impact on how the client heals, so by caring for the family’s needs, the nurse is indirectly caring for the patient. It is in the client’s best interest for the care to be holistic for the patient as well as the family (Jones, Contro & Koch, 2014). All

-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.

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

They must provide total care, which includes feeding, bathing, transferring from bed to wheelchair, and personal hygiene. As her nurse, I check in on her on a weekly basis and also give her shots when needed. However, I have to work directly with her family to understand communication with the patient since she is non-verbal. Studies have shown that parents desire a nurse to communicate directly with a child with cerebral palsy using alternative communications (Hemsley et al., 2014). Collaborating with the patient’s family allowed me to learn non-verbal cues to how the patient was feeling, her mood, and some basic sounds she makes. This patient also has “white coat” syndrome and when I was able to relate to her better, she became comfortable with me coming to see her. Her sister is also associated with our company and is employed as a home health aide. This provides relief for the sister when she has to go out to help with other patients that only require light duty housework. The patient remains pretty stable most of the time despite her debilitating illness. Since the patient is unable to talk and relay her feelings, concerns, or pain, I rely on her family for information needed to care for the patient to the best of my ability. They are very informative and can tell by her body language, facial expressions, and grunts how the patient is feeling. By collaborating with the family, we are able to provide the best

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the family centered services generated preventable client assignment with no definite procedures for stability (Mass & Engler, 1959; Gruber, 1973 ;as cited by Pecora, Reed-Ashcraft, & Kirk). Furthermore, Gruber (1973) established that the problem was rooted in insufficient data to make suitable decisions to address clients concerns. Likewise, Franshel & Shinn (1978; as cited by Pecora, Reed-Ashcraft, & Kirk) added that this resulted in one of many issues such as, family centered services encouraging separation between blood relatives by restricting contact.

Our family was very complex due to the number of children, the fact that it was a single parent home, the socioeconomic status of the family, issues with health literacy, and the initial responses from the family that left us without a clear understanding of their primary health concerns. These conditions required that we be adaptable with one another, as well as our family. We quickly realized that there was an initial assumption among us all that a solution for our family would either be clearly chosen by them, or clearly identified by our interactions with them early on, and this was not the case. Rather, our conversations with the family, their health needs, and our assessments changed with almost every home visit. This complexity might have been much more difficult for our team had we not had a shared mental model very early on. We all agreed that we had to ensure we were making no assumptions, and that every visit was approached with completely open

Family centered care is changing the well known "patient centered" care to including your primary patient's family members as well. Especially when it comes to planning, implementing and evaluating. To a certain degree its caring for your primary patient as a whole, because if their family isn't happy, neither are they. It can give the family members a sense of control in the delivery of ideas, as well as end or lessen emotions such as being overwhelmed or even frightened. Those two emotions as well as others can not only frighten other family members, but because it has frighten them it can frighten the primary patient, causing more added stress to the main patient as well as any others such as a mom and baby.

Strategies and Resources that can help in giving an advance practice of patients and family centered care are composed of these three areas: First, staff should be educated in details about patient and family-centered care. Second, other staff in the hospital should also educate for the awareness and understanding about patient care. Third, include leadership in making the infrastructure to support and develop patient – and – family centered care (Abraham, et. al., 2012).

Family centred care mainly focus on involving family by partnership and collaboration with health care team for the well being of sick family member or child (Kuo, et al., 2012). In pediatric settings families play an important key role with nursing and other medical staff. It is widely excepted concept in most health care facilities (Kuo, et al., 2012). First time American Academy of Paediatric published a policy statement on family centred are in 2003. In paediatric setting family centred care is very closely associated, because children feel more safe in their familiar environment (Callery, 2004). “Family centred care provides an opportunity for the family to care for their hospitalized child under nursing supervision,

and appreciating him as a human being, and partnerships between the patient, his or her family, and health care providers. Moreover, they added that this model is being implemented in hospitals’ practices throughout the United States and can be found in the mission statements of many healthcare facilities (Fredericks et al., 2012).

Based on the story you wrote for the discussion analyze how your microsystems does and does not provide patient and family centered care.

Caring for families and their different traits along with the patient can be extremely complex. I can’t agree with you more on that. After doing the research and reading from our book for this discussion board, I am recognizing that the nursing profession is complex in itself. I never really realized just how instrumental our roles are on the whole dynamic of family care nursing. I hope I don’t sound unknowing, immature or silly in that statement but after reading your post Natalie and learning from the readings it just dawned on me how important all of our nursing roles are to the health and wellbeing of the families, not just the patients. Family nursing is center on the whole family unit

According to the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) it is important to analyze and assess families as a whole in order to come up with a working diagnosis and nursing plan (RNAO, 2006). Families are important because they play a huge role in the patients recovery as they can affect the clients health in a positive or negative way. When caring for a client it is good to include the family in your care plan, because family centered care looks at the patient from a holistic angle (Hutchfield, 1999). The care plan not only focuses on the clients disease, it is also considers the surrounding systems. This paper will discuss the results of two home visits I conducted' after getting the clients' (Mrs.