Family Stress Adaptation Theory And Family Nursing

From a pediatric perspective, the family is an integral part of the healthcare team. Parents are the primary ally and resource in providing individualized care for their child. Even in adult patients, who they are is impacted by the relationships that they have. Serious or chronic illnesses and injuries affect the entire family. The family, then, becomes the patient, particularly when it is necessary to make lifestyle changes.

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

“The purpose of this paper is to apply the Family Systems Stressor-Strengths Inventory (FS3I) to a family and present an analysis of the finding.” For the purpose of this paper the family will been known as the Hyppolite Family. The family discussed in this paper is considered a traditional nuclear family living in a single family home. Included is a Father Andrew Hyppolite (AH) age 38, a mother Katharine (KH), age 36, and four children Zoë , Timothy, Sarah, and Scott, whose ages are 9, 7, 5,3. Andrew and Katherine have been married for 10 years. The mother is a stay a home mom who performs household duties and children activities. The husband Andrew works outside the home at an Accounting Firm. Both parents have a

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.

Families always affect one another, even when they feel distanced. The family unit can promote health or it can be a source of stress. It is the nurse's task to use family relationships to act as health facilitators for the patient, and, if necessary, treat the family as part of the patient's social environment. The family creates the patient's environment just as much as a clean room or an accessible place to exercise or access to appropriate medication.

All health care providers are familiar or have some idea of what family focused care entails. Family focused care can be practiced in any settings in healthcare, and nurses are familiar with this concept as this strong theory based teaching is emphasized throughout the nursing curriculum. With the trend of health care delivery shifting towards home based or community setting, it is now more than ever important for nurses and advance practice nurses (APN) to incorporate family nursing practice for improved outcomes for the patient and their families. This paper will discuss one of the many family nursing theory and its impact on the family nursing practice now and in the future.

Family nursing is not all about patient centered care, it is focused on the needs of the family as a whole (Nursing theory). The main goal for family nursing is to improve any health concerns by assessing the needs,problems,influences, and strentghs of the family (Journal of nursing). There are four four types of approaches to family nursing. The four types of approaches to family nursing are, family as context, family as client, family as system, and family as component of society (the book). The purpose of this paper is to define, discuss, and give examples of the four types of approaches to family nursing.

The nursing profession can be a physically and emotionally challenging job on a daily basis for nurses. It can have an impact on nurse’s mental health, through workplace factors that contribute to stress. Stress is a response that affects people differently and can be a physical, social, economic, or any other factor that requires a specific response to a challenging situation (Harris, Nagy & Vardaxis, 2014, pp. 1638). Within the workplace there are many factors that can cause work related stress that can influence and impact on the mental health of a nurse, however there are also many mental health promotion strategies that can be implemented to improve and build a nurses self-resilience. For the purpose of the assignment, workplace factors that can have an impact on nurses mental health include high workload and exposure to death and dying, these topics will be discussed, as well as two evidence-based strategies of mindfulness and reflective practices or thinking, which nurses can implement to build self-resilience will also be discussed. Stress is a response to challenging situations, people can encounter it in many different parts of their life, including in the workplace.

-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.

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

Moxie, 2007. Maureen Leahey & Lorraine Wright. Family Nursing Resources. Retrieved February 3, 2008 from http://www.familynursingresources.com/aboutus.htmPerry, A & Potter, P. ( 2006) Canadian fundamentals of nursing. (J.Ross-Kerr &

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

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