Concepts of Family Nursing Theory

Nurses hold a unique position among wellness c be professionals in terms of prolonged proximity to patients during a acquit by in hospital or while a person with a long-term health problem is world bootd for at home. In present-day(a) context it is necessary to address the postulate of the families whose lives may be irrevocably changed by the illness of one member. As Friedman (199229) put it The psychosocial strains on a family with a member suffering a degenerative or heartbreaking condition can rival the physical strains on the patient. However, it is not wholly in relation to chronic illness and disability that families may stand in need of help.The family develop handstal life cycle involves natural transitions which may create considerable focal point. One example might be a woman trying to deal with an adolescent son who is engaging in risk-taking with drugs and alcohol, to protect her younger son from his brothers becharm, to persuade her fill husband to give m ore attention to his family while providing some place upright for her mother who is caring for an increasingly frail husband. There is potential for affair in all of these relationships as family members attempt to balance their own needs with those of other members of the family, and of the family as a unit.Such family tensions are likely to influence the health and well-being of each family member, and their ability to deal with unanticipated events such as accidents or unemployment. Wherever families are struggling to maintain or restore equilibrium, to find ways of coping effectively with crisis or with long-term stress, nurses may find themselves in a supportive role.Frude (1990) identifies that in the belles-lettres on families some authors focus upon exclusives and regard other members as being the social context of the person. Other authors look at the family unit as a whole with individual members as parts of the whole.This distinction is minded(p) to raillerys on f amily nurse. Currently nurses and their colleagues see it as both legitimate and significant to take into account the family context of their patients or clients. Much more discussion and collaboration takes place with relatives than in the past. Nurses in some specialties, for instance residential area care for, pediatrics or psychiatric nursing, might argue that because of the nature of their motion they have always been concerned with the family of the particular client or patient.From the contemporary perspective, it is useful to be aware of how family composition is changing in rove to have a mind to the wider context of society as a whole. It is possible to be chthonic the impression that the family today is in storehouse dec chore if all that one reads in the popular press is to be believed. A closer look behind the headlines reveals that what is unders aliked to be under threat is the traditional two biological parent household with reliant children, the nuclear fam ily. It is increasingly apparent that a growing minority of children give experience life in a family that is headed by a lonely(prenominal) parent, usually the mother, before they reach adulthood. A popular misconception is that the majority of these mothers are single women.Their numbers are growing faster than other groups, the figures for which take care to have established at the end of the 1990s, but divorced, separated and widowed mothers still constitute the majority. In addition, the divorce rate in remarried couples body higher than for the general population. There are many factors involved in this but the additional stresses of a reconstituted family may make them more indefensible to breakdown, for instance the parent-child bond predating the marital bond can lead to step-parents competing with their children for primacy with their spouse.Dimmock (1992) notes that too often the blended family is cast in the mould or rarified of the nuclear family. Indeed, many of those involved are keen to view it in that light. Remarried families can often be struggling with unresolved emotional issues at the same time as coping with family transitions. Dimmock (1992) also indicates that society offers the preference of two conceptual models, that of the nuclear family or the wicked step-parent (mostly stepmothers) of fairy tales. The family nursing model allows accommodation of a family with less rigid boundaries. A nurse, peradventure in the role of health visitor, with an understanding of family systems and family nursing could provide valuable support and help for these families to work through some of the issues involved.There is other group of families which is becoming more prominent, particularly in the United States. homosexual and gay parenting is currently a topic of hot interest as our society struggles to decide whether it will move forward on serviceman rights issues or attempt to retrench and move back into a fabulous past of family v alues. Increasingly in the US this is an area of interest and debate, peculiarly as reproductive technologies have advanced so that it is possible for the homosexual woman to contemplate pregnancy without a male partner.Gay men wishing to raise a family are also becoming a focus for media interest and debate in this country. The impact of AIDS and human immunodeficiency virus infection has also highlighted issues concerning next of kin with gay men, particularly deep down the health service and in legal terms.This demonstrates the rightness of accepting the apprehension that, from a nursing perspective, the family is who the individual identifies, although it may not necessarily aline to biological or legal ways of thinking.From the personal viewpoint, the strongest argument for the appropriateness of family nursing in the United States now is the massive shift of care from hospitals and institutions to the community. Patients in hospital are more acutely ill, with resultant s tress for families who need support. In the community families are in the first line of caring for individuals with intractable, often severe, health problems.At the same time, the purpose of nursing is to provide care for those with continuous needs in partnership with flock and with other organizations. Therefore, I totally agree with the purpose of family nursing exposit by Hanson (19878) which is to promote, maintain, and restore family health. Moreover, family nursing is concerned with the interactions between the family and society and among the family and individual family members.ReferencesDimmock, B. (1992) A child of our own, Health Visitor, 65, 10368-370Friedman, M.M. (1992) Family nursing Theory and practice, third edn, ConnecticutAppleton & Lange.Frude, N. (1990) Understanding family problems A psychological approach, ChichesterJohn Wiley & SonsHanson, S.M.H. (1987) Family nursing and chronic illness, in Wright, L., Leahey, M. (1987)Families and chronic illness, Penns ylvania Springhouse.