Table of Contents
The family is a significant social group for an individual and society. Family accommodates every person in the world. A family is a unit where there exists sharing of resources and economic property. A family focuses on creating a caring and supportive relationship among its various individuals. A family brings together individuals of similar characteristics or shared values towards a given objective. A family has the mandate to show commitment or identification with other families. The family is the focal point and the center around which every individual’s life revolves. The primary role of a family is to offer care and support towards a healthy living of its members.
Other individuals may define family as any person who plays a significant role in the life of another member. It is a basic unit of society consisting of husband, wife, and children. The definition of a family as a basic unit also defines family to include all relatives of different generations connected to blood. The various definitions of the family presented in the discussion both emphasize on a family as a social unit that brings particular individuals together Liggett, 2015). Other students define family as a unit connecting individuals who have a blood relationship. However, a family is a unit that creates a supportive relationship among individual family members not necessarily blood-related. The definition of family may vary depending on different students, but the primary objective of a family is similar. Family focuses on the emphasis of family member’s needs.
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Background Awareness
Family background knowledge is an educational tool for predicting an individual’s risk of developing health problems. Community/public health nurses can conduct a family assessment to identify health problems and risk factors and identify solutions to address health concerns. Family background enables the nursing care to assess patients’ susceptibility to health problems based on the assessment of genetic and social indicators. Awareness of backgrounds provides patients and care providers with the knowledge to personalize disease prevention plans.
Knowledge of Definitions
Community/ public health nurses need to understand the family dynamics in nursing care of families. Communication plays a crucial role in making sure that community/ public health nurses provide quality nursing care to different households. Therefore, understanding the connection structure in a particular family is important. In some cases, the communication in a family unit occurs from top to (Bogle, 2015). In such a case, community/ public health nurses need to understand the structure and adhere to such pattern of communication of a given family. Most of the definitions about family revolve around culturally bound dynamics. Public/ community nurses must have an awareness of the definitions about family to avoid conflicting with the family beliefs and desires. As a result, nurses will offer quality nursing care to families.
Awareness of Attitude
Understanding family definitions are important because it enables the nursing care of families to understand different cultures of every family. Medical service providers will need to how to adapt to their delivery of care to meet the diverse family needs of each client. Nurses need to carry out a family assessment to create awareness on the key family definitions. Such definitions comprise ethnic affiliation, religion, language, health beliefs and practices, patient’s birth origin and customs and beliefs around birth and death. Nurses perform their patient’s advocacy role if they understand the key definitions that have an influence on nursing care of families.
Reflection
Family organization plays a significant role in determining forces affecting healthcare delivery among individuals in a given family. Family groups usually have extended family ties where all members of the family play an active role in healthcare. Family plays a crucial role by putting more emphasis on the family needs and not individual needs (Stanhope and Lancaster, 2016). For public health nurses to offer best services in the nursing care of families, they need to understand the background, definitions, and attitudes about families. Public health nurses can conduct a family assessment, which will enable them to understand the health problems affecting different families. Socio-cultural norms play a significant role in determining the quality of nursing care of families. Therefore, public health nurses need to conduct an assessment to understand different family cultural values and beliefs about nursing care.
Conclusion
Family plays a major role in defining a healthy society. Therefore, it is important to prepare nurses for nursing care of families. Family nursing interventions promote family functioning and focus on alleviating suffering, facilitating sustaining beliefs and challenging constraining beliefs (Stanhope and Lancaster, 2016). To improve the quality of nursing care of families, public health nurses must develop awareness of different families’ background and attitudes.
- Bogle, A. (2015, January 27). How Technology Is Changing the Family Tree: A Future Tense Event Recap. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/27/how_technology_is_changing_the_family_tree_a_future_tense_event_recap.html
- Liggett, T. (2015, April 08). The government’s role in supporting families 2.0. Pacific Mountain Workforce Development. Retrieved from http://www.pacmtn.org/the-governments-role-in-supporting-families-2-0/
- Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2016). Public health nursing: Population-centered health care in the community (9th ed). Maryland Heights, MO: Elsevier Mosby.