Table of Contents
Family nursing is an aspect in nursing involving an organized health care services provided to the families as the care unit with an objective to promote health in families particularly for mothers and children. A family nurse practitioner meets individuals as well as family’s healthcare essentials via the provision of a complete primary care all over their life (Kaakinen et al., 2014).
Nurse Home Visiting Programs
Nurse Home Visiting Programs (HVP) enhances the well-being of children and their mothers. The implementation of these programs in the domestic health departments has been supported by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) aiming at parenting and expectant mothers and infants. Through these programs, trained and registered nurses visit expectant women, children, and parenting women. One example of the HVP is the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) which offers several services and counseling to first time as well as low-income mothers through nurses. The scientific analysis has proved that NFP services contribute to enhancing parental health, maternal employment, school preparedness, improve birth spacing as well as reduce subsequent pregnancies and child injuries (Rollans et al., 2016).
However, it is not all HVPs that possess the resources to execute the randomized control experiments. A few have been evaluated through quasi-experiments as “promising practices” wait for an evaluation chance. Nevertheless, every HVP struggles to promote positive results in the well-being and the health of the participants. Child neurodevelopment impairment such as nutrition and drug abuse, pre-term delivery as well as low birth weight are some of the risk factors that the nurse HVP services seek to address. The study provides that these services help the women who smoke reduce pre-term delivery, encourage birth spacing thus lowering high-risk pregnancies as well as influence the behavioral, cognitive and social skills of the children. Moreover, research has also proved that these nurse home visits services also promote long-term health results for children and also improves the overall well-being of the family (Rollans et al., 2016).
Community Nursing Centers
Community health nurses are also referred to as public health nurses. They perform their activities in many various healthcare settings including the ambulatory care centers, work sites, health care facilities, individual homes, the residential institution as well as schools or learning institutions. Normally, the community health nurses can work from any place where there are people in need to provide care as well as execute other roles such as educating, advocating, researching, collaborating and leadership (Ostlund et al., 2015).
Public Health Departments
Public health departments play a critical role in preventing outbreaks and spread of illnesses, promoting healthy communities as well as protect the community health as well as economic vitality. They prevent the start and spread of diseases through enhancing food and physical environment safety, determining the causes of particular illnesses and establish the proper response and also respond to emergencies as well as disasters that can adversely affect human health. On the other hand, the departments promote healthy communities by ensuring good health for individuals throughout their lifespan. This involves helping young people live well and grow into healthy adults and also providing education and services to help minimize chronic complications and illnesses. Moreover, economic vitality and community health are also protected by these departments through upholding policies that enhance the community’s health and also by assessing the needs and enhance the capacity to promote proper health (Ostlund et al., 2015).
Home and Community Education
Home and community education play a crucial role in preventing injury and diseases, improving health as well as improving the quality of life. This involves sharing of information with the public about health to ensure that they live a healthy life. Through the programs, communities are educated on various topics including mental illness, substance abuse, nutrition, unintended pregnancy, physical activity, prevention of obesity, tobacco use as well as oral health (Grant and Luxford, 2011).
Family Health Nursing in Community Health Settings
Family nursing involves a philosophy as well as a means of interacting with the clients that influence the way nurses gather information, advocate and intervene for the patients as well as perceive spiritual care with the families. The practice assumes that families influence the results and process of health care and that health affects all members of the family thus being family events. The primary objectives of the Family health nursing include helping the families make intelligent use of preventive, promotive, rehabilitative as well as therapeutic health and other services and facilities in the community. Another objective is to guide, counsel and educate families to develop good individual health habits, maintain a safe environment and also practice safe cultural activities. Family health nursing has various advantages including saving the hospital beds that can be used for other critical cases and it is also less cheap than the hospital nursing, another advantage is that patients in this heath care enjoy a lot of confidentiality as well as emotional support. Also, the patients are free to continue with their daily routines under this health care (Kaakinen et al., 2014).
Conclusion
Family health nurses are trained and registered nurses who ease the provision of heath care service delivery through visiting individuals in their homes. Moreover, this form of treatment focuses more than just treatment of illnesses but also focuses on promoting the wellbeing of the patients throughout their lives. However, this method of treatment forces the nurses to move with portable laboratory machines to the patient’s homes which be one of the difficulties experienced by nurses in their course of duty.
- Kaakinen, J. R., Coehlo, D. P., Steele, R., Tabacco, A., & Hanson, S. M. H. (2014). Family health care nursing: Theory, practice, and research. FA Davis.
- Grant, J., & Luxford, Y. (2011). ‘Culture it’s a big term isn’t it’? An analysis of child and family health nurses’ understandings of culture and intercultural communication. Health Sociology Review, (1), 16.
- Rollans, M., Kohlhoff, J., Meade, T., Kemp, L., & Schmied, V. (2016). Partner involvement: negotiating the presence of partners in psychosocial assessment as conducted by midwives and child and family health nurses. Infant Mental Health Journal, (3), 302. doi:10.1002/imhj.21562
- Ostlund, U., Backstrom, B., Lindh, V., Sundin, K., & Saveman, B. (2015). Nurses’ fidelity to theory-based core components when implementing Family Health Conversations – a qualitative inquiry. Scandinavian Journal Of Caring Sciences, (3), 582. doi:10.1111/scs.12178