Parents ' Actual Vs. Desire

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.

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

In the case of my family interaction, the OQQ helps me as a student nurse to communicate with the parents about their son. Family is the constant in the adolescent’s life, hence; I must work with the family to develop the best plan of care for the adolescent. The family is also the adolescent’s main source of support providing stability in what can be an otherwise traumatic period in the adolescent’s life. The most important task of the nurse is to provide support to the family. Nurses should not only establish rapport with the patient but also with the family. This allows for optimal collaboration and collaborating with the family maximizes each child’s growth and well- being. Working together parents and health care workers can make more personal and informed decisions regarding what the best treatment is for the child. (Neal et al., 2007)

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

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.

1) I will observe how my preceptor and other nurses on the unit demonstrate patient and family centred care, and I will do a literature review on the importance of providing family centered care in nursing practice when working with paediatric patients (Harrison, 2010), (Kuo et al., 2011). (Roberts, Fenton & Barnard, 2015).

children and families cope and adjust to the challenges of hospital visits. Although a child life

I am interested in NICU nursing, mainly due to my own personal experience of having, had an infant in the NICU. My experience was life changing and very positive because of the incredible nurses that cared for my baby. I found an interesting article about (Ryan) the importance of including parents in plan of care for infants in the NICU. The article dicusses how it can be difficult for parents with children in the NICU because there is so much medical intervention taking place that threatens to take away their control or autonamy, as parents. I can attest to the fact that having a sick baby is scary. My baby was born in Portland, Maine. The nurses spent a great deal of time educating me on what to expect on a daily basis. They did have a couple of full time patient advocates to help educate and console families. There was just so much to learn. They had to teach me how to care for my child in the NICU setting. This was my fourth baby, the nurses were so patient. They allowed my baby’s older siblings to come and visit their little brother. They not only taught my children how to wash and gown up, but, helped them begin a relationship with their brother. They

-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).

The article showed that over the year’s clinician’s attitude to having family present had become more positive but had concerns about safety, the emotional responses of the family members, and performance anxiety. Nurses had more favorable attitudes toward family presence than physicians did. Patients and their families had positive attitudes toward family presence. Family presence is beneficial to patients, patients’ families; to them it provides emotional support, helps decrease anxiety and makes the patient feel empowered. As family presence becomes a more accepted practice, healthcare providers will need to accommodate patients’ families at the bedside and address the barriers that impede the practice.

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

In 2015, I started working as a pediatric Licensed Practical Nurse, and throughout my journey, I provided care to a various family with children with special need. Every family is different, some were made of a single mother and her children, some were extended families, and most importantly every mother was at least eighty percent involve in her childcare. During my nursing clinical rotations and my few trips to doctor’s appointments, I tend to see more women accompany their children to medical visit or any other event. I believe that women around the world are to encourage and celebrate the amazing care they provide to their children. I also believe that the bond between mother and child is a very special alliance that needs to be Cherise.

Parents with critically ill children legal responsibility is to make sure children get the best care. In most cases, a child's parents are the persons who care the most about their child and know the most about him or her. As a result, parents are better situated than most others to understand the unique needs of their child and to make decisions that are in the child’s interests. Furthermore, since many medical decisions will also affect the child's family, parents can factor family issues and values into medical decisions about their children.

In 1969 the Governor of California Ronald Reagan, signed the first “no fault” divorce bill (Wilcox). This allowed people to divorce their spouse with no actual reason of why divorce was necessary. After Reagan signed the bill almost every state followed his lead, causing a drastic increase in divorces across America (Wilcox). This means that “50% of all the children born to married parents today, will experience the divorce of their parents before they are 18 years old”(Children). Parents often decide to go through with a divorce because of their own unhappiness. That in fact beyond most peoples belief is a wise decision. No child should be raised in an unhappy home, and living with two people who no longer