Topic: Strengths-based nursing & healthcare
Pages: 3, Double spaced
Sources: 6
Order type: Assessment
Subject: Nursing
Style: Harvard
Language: English (U.S.)
Part 1
Answer the following question: (450 words)
“What benefits do you think a family strengths assessment can have for clinical practice and promoting family health?”
3 – 4 References please
(From the ‘Critical questions and reflections’ on page 107 in Barnes & Rowe text book).
Part 2
Reply to this post with relevant feedback to their comments (e.g. discuss a point supported by a reference, (approximately 450 words total).
Family-strengths nursing assessments are designed to encourage patients and their family members identify their capabilities and competencies, from their own perspectives (Trivette & Dunst 1990). It is also designed to strengthen the nurse-patient-family relationship. Family-strengths assessment tools are described as being solution-focused, by enabling nurses to help families build on their own resilience (Barnes & Rowe 2014).
McMurray & Clendon (2015) describe family as the filter or mediating structure protecting individual family members within the wider society. Defining family as whoever they say they are, enables a collaborative approach that optimizes the possibility of meeting a family’s needs, and promotes better health outcomes. Contemporary definitions of families, consider them to be diverse and dynamic as a result of social change and progression. Clinicians and policies need to consider that the social concept of the nuclear family has been replaced with step and blended families, couples without children, lone parents, grand-parents families, same sex parent families, and so forth (Barnes & Rowe 2014). Offering family-strengths based assessments and care for many Australian Aboriginal family groups is inclusive of anyone who is accepted as family, and may even include the families’ child and family health workers (McMurray & Clendon 2015).
Family-strengths assessments uncover, discover and provide indications of how to optimize functioning within a family (Gottlieb & Gottlieb 2017). Families are not assessed against guidelines, as the concept of normative criteria disempowers families with social or historical disadvantages (McMurray & Clendon 2015). Trivette & Dunst (1990) explains that every family has strengths, and the importance of family-strengths based assessment and care is to support and enhance strengths, rather than focusing on rectifying deficits. Family-strengths assessments and care are formed by a value-driven approach that has transitioned from traditional, deficit-based models, and is rooted in principles of person/family-centred care and empowerment (Gottlieb & Gottlieb 2017).
Functioning style, can be used to refer to certain combinations of qualities within a family. Some such qualities can include communication abilities that promote positive interactions between family members, having a repertoire of coping mechanisms for dealing with normative and non-normative life events, and the ability of planning for the future but utilizing internal and external family resources. Essentially, family strengths contribute to how individual family members, and also the family as a unit, respond to stress and demonstrate resilience. Whilst the family strengths philosophy is not deficit-based, an assessment can assist clinicians to promote the family acquire new competencies, as well as optimizing existing ones. This will help the family to mobilise their resources to meet their individual and family unit needs. It will also empower the family to feel they have a sense of control over aspects of their life, despite crises they may be experiencing. Ultimately, strengthening family functioning makes families more independent, and less dependent on health care professionals (Trivette & Dunst 1990).
References:
Barnes M & Rowe J 2013, Child, Youth and Family Health: Strengthening Communities, Elsevier Australia, Chatswood.
Gottlieb L & Gottlieb B 2017 Strengths-Based Nursing: A Process for Implementing a Philosophy into Practice, Journal of Family Nursing, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 319-340, viewed 12 September 2017,
< http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1074840717717731?url_ver=Z39.88- 2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed>.
Trivette CM & Dunst CJ 1990, ‘Assessing family strengths and family functioning style,’ Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, vol. 10, no. 1, viewed 24 September 2017, <<http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.utas.edu.au/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=f1acaa12-6b3c-4a81-974b-d93c4e58172e%40sessionmgr4009&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=9602291996&db=asn>.
McMurray A & Clendon J 2015, Community Health and Wellness: Primary health care in practice, Elsevier Australia, Chatswood.
