family health assessment

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

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:

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

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.

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

Family. A word that has about as many meanings as there are stars in the sky. Can family truly be defined, or is it merely interpretive? According to Seccombe, family is a relationship by blood, marriage, or affection, in which members may cooperate economically, may care for children, and may consider their identity to be intimately connected to the larger group (Seccombe 4). Although I do agree with the above explanation of family, I believe that it is inadequate in that it only supplies a framework of family rather than the duties and purpose. To me, family is a unit of individuals, related or not, that symbolize and exude comfort, solace, and support through all the trials and triumphs life throws our way.

As nurses it is essential to use appropriate tools to assess individuals, families, and communities. Throughout this paper the writer used The Gordon’s 11 Functional Health Patterns as a guide to assess a family. This family included a mother, a father, one son, four daughters, and two grandsons. The writer developed two to three open minded, family focused questions for each of the 11 functional health patterns. In this paper the writer summarizes the findings of each functional health patterns of the family, and identifies three wellness nursing diagnoses based on the family assessment.

The elimination pattern describes characteristics of regularity and control of the family's excretory functions (Gordon, 2007).

Family is the basic unit of society. A family is a set of interacting individuals related by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption who interdependently perform relevant functions by fulfilling expected roles. Health practices are those activities performed by individuals or families as a whole to promote health and prevent diseases. The relationship between members of family influences the understanding of behavior, which is demonstrated in family’s structural, functional, communicational, and developmental patterns (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2003; Bonell et al., 2003).Within families, children and adults are nurtured and taught about health values by word and by example, and it is within families that

The Family Systems Stressor-Strength Inventory (FS3I) scoring reflects how well different aspects apply to the Hyppolite family. Includes health issues, responsibilities, communications, work situation, satisfaction, housekeeping standards, etc… The Scoring was divided into two different sections, Family Perception Score and Clinical Perceptions Scores. Both sections were then divided into another three parts. The tool strengths and stressors factors are

A family is seen as a group of people who are biologically or psychologically related. They connect on historical, emotional

Family structure theory is influential in helping the nursing professionals identifies how family members interact with each other to form baselines. The interactions of the family member with one another helps establish behavioral patterns by which the nursing professionals can focus while assessing various aspects such as why, how, and under what conditions family members behave in their assumed roles. The family structure theory also provides direction regarding the organization of the family and how the family members can adopt when they encounter modifications, diseases, and crisis (Edelman, Elizabeth & Mandle, 2014). The nursing professional can facilitate improvement in family functioning when the Family Structure Theory reveals that

America having been a very welcoming nation with welcoming people continues to experience immigrants from other parts of the world in search of better living standards and employment opportunities, hence has a high growing population with diverse cultures .This writer is a new immigrant from Africa .For that reason it is important for nurses to learn the health practices from different group of people to familiarize themselves with differing cultures. This writer did a health heritage assessment on two other different families .This heritage assessment tool was very helpful to this writer in getting

Health Perception is asking patient about their past medical history such as past surgery, illnesses, chronic disease, Immunization, use of tobacco, alcohol or drugs. Does patient take any prescription/nonprescription drugs and do they have any allergy to medicine. Knowing patients religion and religion restriction can be very useful to the nurse. As a nurse always good to know patients height and weight. When it comes to nutrition some patients have some diet restrictions. For example low cholesterol, low sodium, diabetic diet. There are patients with decreased appetite unable to tolerate food due to decreased taste or some health condition. Nutrition can affect a person health if a person has swallowing or chewing difficulties. In this case tube feeding is required.

“The family are a close group of people, usually related not always. Who support each other and at some point in their lives tend to live in the same household.”