Relationship Between The Medical Professionals And The Family System

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

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

rganizing the delivery of health care around the needs of the patient may seem like a simple and obvious approach. In a system as complex as health care, however, little is simple. In fact, thirty years ago when the idea of “patient-centered care” first emerged as a return to the holistic roots of health care, it was swiftly dismissed by all but the most philosophically progressive providers as trivial, superficial, or unrealistic. Its defining characteristics of partnering with patients and families, of welcoming―even encouraging―their

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.

Patient-centered care refers to the view that patients and their family members are partners in developing a care plan. This stems from the belief that the patient is in control and that the care provided is rooted in respect that addresses the patient’s personal needs and values (Barnsteiner & Sherwood, 2012). Creating a partnership with a patient that allows them to grasp the goals and methods of their plan of care and includes them in the decision-making process can prevent errors from occurring. This gives the patient the opportunity to correct any

The article goes on to address the importance of specifically designing practices related to family centered care in the pediatric setting. Four recommendations are set forth in this guideline: family visitation, family centered rounds, family presence during CPR and invasive procedures, and family conferences. Recurrent themes in these areas are listening to and respect the family. communication of information and answering questions, education, and collaboration in developing treatment. While most of the information in this article is focused on the parents and ill child, many of the suggestions are applicable and adaptable to siblings (Meert, Clark, & Eggly, 2013).

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.

Nursing has evolved in many ways over the years, in particular is the Florence Nightingale foundation of caring for the whole family and not just the patient. The following case study of Omid 's story: The Power of Family-Centered Care highlights the positive and negative aspects of their family’s healthcare experiences , and models of family nursing and concepts of family-centred care. By comparing the theories and models to what is currently put into practice by today’s nurses and healthcare providers a better outcome for this family is idealized.

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

According to Hood (2014), patient centered care embraces a holistic approach which includes taking in consideration the patient/patient’s family preferences, culture or religious needs, values, and specific lifestyle choices (p. 408). The nurse then supplies knowledge and resources to support the patient in the health making decision process. “We need a mechanism to close gaps between the current and the ideal state (from patients’ and families’ points of view). The mechanism by which these gaps are closed should create “aha” moments each time it’s used, so that its usefulness is apparent.” (DiGioia 2016, p. 34). Reaching these “aha” moments with the patient and their families validates the nurses’ efforts of overcoming the presented barriers and accomplishing the expected patient

“Family-centered care” is a term heard often in healthcare settings and in nursing practice. Family-centered care has been recognized as being an integral part to patient health, satisfaction and health care quality (Kuo, et al, 2012). Family-centered care is implemented with the goal to increase partnerships between, families, patients and providers; and has been prioritized as a core-concept of quality healthcare (Gallo, Hill, Hoagwood & Olin, 2016) Many professionals, however, would be hard-pressed to state what the term “family-centered care” actually means and how it applies to nursing practice. They would be at a loss for how to implement family-centered care and what is absolutely necessary to have in order for family-centered care to be successful. Advanced practice nurses are faced with the challenge of adhering to family-centered care in their practice. Illness, both chronic and acute, and health does not just affect the patient involved in care. Illness and health affect the patient, their children, their spouses, their parents, their brothers, their sisters, their grandparents and anyone else involved in their life. Research by Davidson (2009) supports the idea that the perceived effectiveness of communication between healthcare providers and the patient’s family is related to the overall satisfaction of care. Advance

Nursing involves greater purpose beside the objective of treating patients’ ailments in an efficient and effective manner. Nurses, physicians, and health care providers across the board uphold the duty to treat patients with the utmost value of care. As a universal definition of care does not exist, Anita Finkelman and Carole Kenner explain care is drawn from four perspectives: a sense of care involving compassion, knowledge and expertise that allows nurses to advocate for the patient in addition to treating the medial complication, and “…competence in carrying out all the required procedures, personal and technical, with true concern for providing the proper care at the proper time in the proper way (Finkelman & Kenner, 2013) . Combining the foundation of every perspective leads to the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) first core competency of patient-centered care. Sans the image of patient-centered care the practice of nursing and medicine alike will lack the passion the American Nursing Association envisions for “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and care of individuals, families, communities, and populations” (Finkelman & Kenner, 2013). Therefore, the author of this paper explores the IOM’s definition of patient-centered care, implementation of the concept, and its pivotal relationship to the nursing profession.