The Importance Of Parental Presence In Nursing Practice

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

As an aspiring Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, I will graduate from UNCG with my BSN, work for a year as an RN, and eventually attend a graduate school to accomplish my ultimate goal of obtaining my DNP. As a neonatal nurse practitioner, it is imperative to exude compassion, while demonstrating critical thinking skills when faced with arduous circumstances. I understand that working with distressed families in the NICU will be a challenging task, both emotionally and physically. I am aware that it is my responsibility as a nurse to not only know how to provide physical care to my patient's, but to also attend to their emotional needs and the needs of their loved ones. Nurses are expected to be the liaison between families and doctors. So, in the

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

-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).

We believe that in order for children to receive quality care and early learning that suits their individual needs, parents and staff need to work together in a close partnership. The two-way sharing of information is key to this. The nursery team welcomes parents as partners and this relationship needs to be built on trust and understanding. It is important that we, as practitioners, are able to support parents in an open and sensitive manner. The nursery wishes to ensure parents are an integral part of the care and early learning team within the nursery.

According to Erlingsson and Brysiewicz (2015), family is considered a core, social institution and is our first interaction with human beings. When viewing the family as a context, the nurse assesses the patient that is in need of care while in the background, there are the family members of the patient. According to Kaakinen, Coehlo, Steel, Tabacco & Hanson (2015), the source of support to the patient is his or her family members. Usually family members are in attendance with the patient. This approach is used when a mother is admitted to the intensive care unit after falling and sustaining head trauma. The patient is the mother. The nurse is focused on the mother and care was directed

Group members are struggling with the many facets of having a NICU baby. This session will deal with some of the very common issues. Parents of NICU babies are often worried about how slowly their child may be progressing in comparison to other babies. This session the group will work through some of those progressions and regressions and help the parents to cope with this. Parents are sitting in the NICU for hours, watching other babies do things that their baby is not doing. However, this session will help show the parents that they are all doing this. Every parent in the group has likely been the parent on either end of that frustration/joy. Regression can be hard for parents and does happen often during a NICU stay. Group members may show some reluctant to talk about their child’s set-backs. They may be discouraged by them. Parents have a strong desire to know when their child will be discharged from the hospital. This can cause them to become upset when that does not happen (Pepler et. Al, 2012).

The APN leader interviewed for this paper is a Board Certified Nurse Practitioner (CNP), Chery Arnett works in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for Memorial Hospital of Carbondale. She began as a registered nurse in 1981, then in 2001earned her CNP title. She manages and cares for the ill neonate, collaborates with Neonatologist and Pediatricians to improve overall health outcomes. She provides support and assists ventilation, assists with deliveries both “normal” and high risk infants, provides care for the healthy newborns, also providing guidance to parents for caring for the “neonate” or healthy newborns. She is also responsible for assessments, orders, treatment plans, medications, and discharge of the infant. CNP’s provide initial, ongoing and comprehensive care, including managing patients with acute and chronic illness and diseases for both premature infants and term infants.

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.

Oftentimes, as patients it is easier to analyze the healthcare setting from a critical perspective rather than a hopeful perspective. Oftentimes, as patients our encounters in healthcare settings are high stress to begin with (e.g. diagnosis, disease, caretaking). To my surprise, Nicole informed of several communication projects that she underwent and continues to participate in at Stanford Children’s Hospital. Nicole informed me that she did undergo a mandatory general seminar on the basics of professionalism and therapeutic relationships with families upon being hired. Since then, Nicole has been required to take more formal classes that have developed as an aim of standardizing certain interactions with families. Some examples include: standard way to answer the phone, walking with someone who is lost to their destination rather than just giving directions. Nicole stated “it has really become more customer service focused.”

On arrival, Joe’s mother Catherine was distressed and throughout every stage of Joe’s care it was important Catherine was provided with clear information in order to empower her to make informed choices regarding Joe’s care (Glasper et al. 2010). Parental involvement was introduced after the Platt Report in 1959 which recommended that parents should be allowed to stay with their hospitalised child. The report has led to significant improvements in interactions between parents of hospitalised children and the staff who care for them (Priddis and Sheilds 2011). Sousa et al (2013) carried out a study that found communication between parents and children’s nurses is vital. Sousa et al (2013) found that almost all parents who participated in the questionnaire agreed it was a priority to get information on their child’s health condition. This indicates that is important for nurses to manage the child and family as a whole holistically (NMC 2015). Catherine

“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

Drozdowicz (2014) relates how the essence of communication to the family unit by providers differs in the NICU as compared to the pediatric and adult populations. Drozdowicz (2014) strikes a holistic approach in encouraging provider to talk to the NICU infant allowing a relationship to form that creates a calming environment of caring. Sweet and Mannix (2007) describe a mixed-method study to explore the stress levels of parents; the behavior of nursing staff was the most influential indicator of parental health literacy of their NICU infant and ability to respond to the NICU infant needs. The nurse creates a role-modeling opportunity that prompt parents. Little qualitative or quantitative research exists for this holistic nursing intervention.