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Roles of family health nursing
Roles of family health nursing
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Family health nursing is the nucleus of any nursing practice. It is utilized in all aspects of healthcare. Health and illnesses affect the family as a whole. It is a major family event when one or more of the family members are involved with a medical problem. This affects the health of the individual members and vice versa. Support for the family is just as important as it is for the patient. Health care effectiveness is improved when emphasis is placed on the family. A nurse plays a critical role with the interventions of family health care. Promotion, maintenance and restoration of the health of families are important to the survival of society.
Social and economic challenges have led to the decline of the human family and have
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Alzheimer’s disease is a major one. Currently there is no cure; medical treatments are limited but evolving with research. These remedies slow the worsening of the symptoms and improve the patient’s quality of life. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease and is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States (http://www.alz.org, n.d., para. 3). Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s can be a journey that is long, stressful, emotional and isolating. About 15 million people in the United States are caring for a person with this disease (http://www.helpguide.org, n.d.). Many people face challenges and fears similar to the documentary video, The Alzheimer’s Project: Caregivers. It can be very straining on the lives of the caretaker’s family. Marriages and relationships take a toll. The burden of caregiving increases the risk for significant health problems including high blood pressure, diabetes and a compromised immune system. Sadness, anxiety, loneliness and exhaustion are often experienced by the caregiver. I have not undergone the role of caretaker for an Alzheimer’s person. My occurrence was visiting a family member that had a progressive but relatively short bout with this disease. Due to an injury sustained during a fall from a wandering episode, my mother-in-law was put into a facility to manage her care. My father-in-law was unable to care for her and the rest of the family had professional lives and chose not to be the primary caretaker. Although, I noticed the family still endured the same emotional impacts of a caregiver but they did not the encounter any of the significant health
Pah-Lavan, Z. (2006). Alzheimer's disease: the road to oblivion. Journal of Community Nursing, 20(5), 4. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
I worked with Dementia and Alzheimer patients as a Certified Nursing Assistant for almost three years. Working with the elderly has been one of my greatest achievements. I assisted my residents with bathing, grooming and making them feel comfortable. I was able to create a favorable environment for my residents while working with them. I had the opportunity to see patients go from early stage to their last stage of dementia. This gave me an opportunity to want to do more for people who are in need of my care. From my experience, I learnt that nursing is not just a job; it’s a responsibility and a calling, and it requires that you derive joy in what you are doing even in the toughest moment of caring for your
(Davidson, F. G.) Due to the nature of dementia being a neuropsychological disorder, those affected by the disease tend to look like they will not require much care, which, in reality, they often require more care than the caregiver originally expected, leading to stress and burnout. Another effect caused by this can be the caregiver blaming themselves by feeling like they are failing to give proper care, which, in reality, can often be very far from the truth. If the caregiver does not receive help from anyone else, the task of watching over the victim becomes a daunting twenty for hour task. Sometimes, the caregiver won’t be allowed quality sleep. Over 66 percent of home caregivers suffer from some form of psychological or physical illness. The most common illness that is resulted from giving care to Alzheimer’s disease is depression. The caregiver needs to monitor their emotional well-being as well as the well-being as the person that they are giving care to. Usually, giving care to those with dementia is actually more stressful than giving care to those with cancer. When the caregiver is a family member and not a professional, the emotional toll is often even greater. It is important for caregivers to remember that they need to take care of themselves first and
Family health is receiving substantial attention in the contemporary decades, following a growing number of unpredicted health issues. Family health assessments have become common techniques within the health care systems across the world to promote good health. Nursing Family assessment and intervention models have been developed in to assists nurses and families to identify the family issues and develop the best.
The Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) is a well-known comprehensive and multidimensional template used by nurses to assess families. CFAM begins by having the nurse visit with the family and gain insight on the family’s functioning at a particular point in time. Interviewing the family allows the nurse to assess and identify potential issues. Furthermore, the CFAM consists of three main assessment categories, known as structural, developmental, and functional. Each of these categories contains several subcategories that allow the nurse to examine all aspects of a family’s functioning. The goal of the CFAM is for the nurse to openly discuss family issues, provide insight to families from an outside perspective and guide them towards their own problem solving tactics. CFAM allows families and nurse to develop a plan of care that is mutually agreed upon. The following paper illustrates a family assessment completed using the CFAM and applies nursing diagnoses and interventions relevant to the family’s current issues (Wright & Leahey, 2013).
Slight Reminder of Credentials – In taking care of my mom, who was diagnosed with AD. I have learned first-hand that caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease can be very stressful.
Dementia is the loss of a person’s mental skills from their daily routines. The symptoms of dementia could easily be over looked, they include forgetting things, daily routines are hard to complete, misplacing things, depression, aggravation and aggression, emotion are high, even feeling like someone is a threat to their life (Web MD,2012). Caring for someone with dementia can be difficult if with resources like healthcare, living facilities, nursing homes and medicine is involved, but sometimes healthcare and facilities do not provide the proper care. This disease is very common in the elderly community past the age of sixty-five. Finding out that a loved
Also, the whole family needs to come to term with the health condition, make change in priorities and schedule, and keep the family. For example, it can be much more stressful for a young or a newly married couple because they may have more experience to overcome life's difficulties. As a result, as with individual maturation, family development can be delayed or even revert to a previous level of functioning (Hockenberry, p 762.) Therefore, health care providers need to apply family development theory while planning care for a child and family with chronic health condition. Indeed, family centered care should be a part of that intervention. Parents and family members have huge and comprehensive caregiving responsibilities for their chronically ill child at home or at hospital. Moreover, the main goal taking care of chronic ill child is to “minimize the progression of the disease and maximize the child’s physical, cognitive, psychological potential” (Hockenberry, p 763). Therefore, it is essential to family being part of the child care to give highest quality of care. On the other hand, we are as a part of the health care provider need to give attention to all
Informal supports, such as aid for housekeeping and running errands, are crucial to maintaining the lifestyle of individuals with Alzheimer’s in the community; however, the disease’s erosion of physical, cognitive, and communicative abilities often creates tremendous strain for family caregivers. Individuals and family caregivers dealing with Alzheimer’s often experience increasing social isolation as the disease’s progression undermines both mobility and the capacity for meaningful and appropriate engagement with the community (Banerjee et al., 2003). A number of studies have documented the physical and mental health costs borne by unsupported caregivers, and the link between caregiver stress and the institutionalization of their ill family members (Andren & Elmstahl, 2005; Banerjee et al., 2003). Taken together, the stress and isolation of dealing with Alzheimer’s disease undermine the health and quality of life of everyone involved, eventually precipitating institutionalization.
Dementia is common among a large population of elderly people. The disease affects not only the individual diagnosed, but also the caregivers that work towards making their life comfortable in the end. Understanding and learning about the disease is crucial in helping those that experience or live with someone who has dementia. The services and support that are currently in affect for elderly people with dementia and the caregivers is poor, and ineffective because of the lack of research and information on the topic.
It is no secret that the current healthcare reformation is a contentious matter that promises to transform the way Americans view an already complex healthcare system. The newly insured population is expected to increase by an estimated 32 million while facing an expected shortage of up to 44,000 primary care physicians within the next 12 years (Doherty, 2010). Amidst these already overwhelming challenges, healthcare systems are becoming increasingly scrutinized to identify a way to improve cost containment and patient access (Curits & Netten, 2007). “Growing awareness of the importance of health promotion and disease prevention, the increased complexity of community-based care, and the need to use scarce human healthcare resources, especially family physicians, far more efficiently and effectively, have resulted in increased emphasis on primary healthcare renewal…” (Bailey, Jones & Way, 2006, p. 381). The key to a successful healthcare reformation is interdisciplinary collaboration between Family Nurse Practitioners (FNPs) and physicians. The purpose of this paper is to review the established role of the FNP, appreciate the anticipated paradigm shift in healthcare between FNPs and primary care physicians, and recognize the potential associated benefits and complications that may ensue.
Treating the patient and family as one, can have improved outcomes, decrease hospital stays, increased patient satisfaction, and improved reimbursements for the hospital. Developing a relationship with not only the patient, but family as well, can pay off in the long run by providing better communication, better quality of care, and trust. The patient and family can be strong advocates for improved performance improvement efforts. Including family in the treatment of the patient treats the “whole” patient through their hospitalization. Involving the family can enhance the patients care.
In nursing, the patient is often viewed as the main priority of the nursing staff. The nurse works to provide care for the patient based on the patient 's admitting diagnosis. However, the patient must be looked at as a part of the greater system they exist in such as their family or home environment. While the patient may be ill due to a bacterial infection or virus, their family environment also plays a role in their overall health and wellness.
In health care, there are many different approaches throughout the field of nursing. When considering the field of family nursing, there are four different approaches to caring for patients. This paper will discuss the different approaches along with a scenario that covers that approach. The approaches that will be discussed include family as a context, family as a client, family as a system, and family as a component to society. Each of these scenarios are approach differently within the field of nursing.
Family health assessment is a process of getting information from the family about health promotion and disease-prevention activities. Family assessment includes nurse’s perceptions about family constitution, norms, standards, theoretical knowledge, and communication abilities. Marjorie Gordon (1987) proposed eleven functional health patterns as a guide for establishing a comprehensive nursing data base. These functional health patterns (2007) help organize basic family assessment information (Friedman et al., 2003) (Edelman & Mandle, 2010, p. 173-177).Eleven health functions are as follows. Health perception and / or health management pattern, nutritional pattern, elimination pattern, activity/exercise pattern, cognitive/perceptual pattern, sleep/rest pattern, self-perception and self-concept pattern, role/relationship pattern, sexuality/reproductive pattern, coping/stress tolerance pattern, and value/belief...