Family health 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.

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.

Although I enjoy all facets of nursing, I truly believe that it is in the field of family practice that the foundation of the nursing process begins. I have seen many patients over the course of my career without a stable, primary care healthcare provider. Health and wellness begins with day-to-day habits, and a nurse in family care is uniquely poised to give wellness advice and guidance. Family nurse practitioners often perform similar functions to physicians: making diagnoses; prescribing tests and medications; and helping patients over the course of their life trajectories lead more fulfilling lives. Primary caregiving is truly wellness promotion. It involves not simply healing the sick, but also reducing the likelihood that patients will become ill. I have seen so many patients with preventable illnesses that could have

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.

Father, son and daughter Johnson tolerate physical activity very well and all have shared a lifelong interest in swimming and biking. All would agree that regular exercise reduces stress and improves coping abilities for them. Mother however has never participated in regular physical fitness and does not tolerate strenuous activities very well. Strenuous activities are avoided now primarily because of the (bladder) stress incontinence problem she has. She denies feeling any benefits of stress reduction when she is active (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

Prepare a critical analysis of a qualitative study focusing on the problem statement, study purpose, research question, literature review, and theoretical framework. This can be one of the selected articles from your previous literature review or a new peer-reviewed article.

No major events have occurred in their life since the death of AH’s mom 2 years ago. In the event of any crisis, they depend on the extended family and church members for emotional and morale support. After this family assessment, I felt that the nursing wellness diagnosis (2012) for this family would be:

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

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 &

Activity and exercise assessment is focused on the activities of ADL’s, exercise and leisure activities (Kriegler & Harton, 1992). Activities and exercise is limited in this family due to the parents work schedule. The father runs and exercises both at home and at the YMCA when time allows, which is a few times a week. The grandmothers mobility is limited due to balance issues, although she is participating in physical therapy at the present time for strengthening. They don’t feel they exercise enough although they know how important it is for them to exercise especially with their diabetes. Normal ADL 's are a minor problem for the grandmother although the grandfather helps her. The parents function at a high level with every day activities.

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