Abstract
Over recent years the family’s role in the efficient and effective recovery of patients has been studied across various levels in the world. These studies on family healthcare nursing have definitively cut across and tried to recognize the involvement of families in recovery to patients on different levels and thereby understand the family systems and hierarchy and their effects on how a patient presents his symptoms. Despite the vital role played by nurses both at home and in the hospitals, it is evident that the patient’s family holds the greater power in influencing the patient’s recovery. This paper also seeks to explain how the families, together with the nurses, may be educated on how they can come together and adequately nurse the patients. It also aims to inform the family on ways to deal with trauma and depression brought about by illnesses hitting the family.
Introduction
Evidence-based practice refers to the process by which practitioners in various healthcare professions analyze and evaluate the most recent, highest-quality research to keep their training up to date (Evidence-based practice, 2022). Nurses make judgments based on the principles of the evidence-based approach on how to give the best care to their patients effectively. When nurses incorporate the most up-to-date science and skills into their practice, they create a complete, patient-centered approach that allows them to provide the best possible care to their patients.
The term family has various standard definitions in the different areas we may use it. Even so, every meaning of the name family is valid. As our language knowledge level continues evolving, different definitions will emerge and become more precise than those given before. Therefore, a family is defined as:
- Biologically: individuals who share the same genetic ties and ancestry.
- Legally: brought together either through marriage or adoption
- Structurally: brought about by distinctive positions or roles such as mother or guardian
- Functionally: by the members’ contribution to the society or community
- Subjectively: Individual perceptions, interpretations, and meanings of his family regarding commitment and affiliation.
Understanding these definitions gives an example of who the family constitutes and the relationship between family members. A family is also defined as two or more people who rely on each other for emotional, physical, and financial assistance. The family members are self–identified. (Kaakinen et al., 2018)
Family nursing, on the other hand, is the provision of nursing care to both the family as whole and individual family members, with a focus on inter-family interactions (Friedman et al., 2003).
Families and nurses form a relationship by coming together to address the general health of the family members or focus on a particular illness. This relationship is developed to ease the way the family adapts and responds to various issues affecting them and also focus on improving the success of the family members. The illness affects all members of a family (Leahey & Wright, 2013)
Family healthcare nursing as an evidence-based best practice
Various methods have been implemented before, but an ongoing series of informed and targeted research on family nursing led to the update and general growth of skills to both nurses and family members. Various involved individuals were also educated on the most rewarding ways by which patient recovery and healing are centered.
The method included coming up with a model whereby nurses would be taught particular ways on which they could use therapy hand in hand with members of a patient’s family to maximize recovery process speeds. The nurses were taught how to develop and implement innovative teaching methods for incorporating family members into patient care. The study was targeted for families with an ill member.
On the flipside, the study did not focus on obtaining data from patients of similar age but a wide range of age (14 to 52 years) was taken into account in order to diversify the data and the techniques to be used. Ethics approval was obtained from the hospital itself and the study was done to families willing to take part in the study. Therefore, a four-phase project was designed that took place in a hospital in the country:
- Adaptation is the first phase: Examine the changes that will be required to deliver the program in different locations while maintaining model integrity.
- Phase two: Pilot testing and evaluation to determine feasibility and acceptance. Conduct a pilot test of the adapted program to determine what additional changes may be required to assure the adapted program’s practicality and acceptance.
- The third phase is a randomized controlled study. Consider undertaking a randomized controlled experiment to expand the testing and evaluation activities.
- The fourth phase entails further refinement and extension. The data was refined after we evaluated the trials, and the outcomes were determined to be of public health importance.
The most current research was done through evaluation and implementation, thereby utilizing the best external evidence. Throughout the research period, the main issues that worked were considered and led to the detailed appraisal of previously known issues related to family healthcare nursing. These main issues are the ones that made the most growth and recovery with patients and are therefore the best that was implemented and researched further in order to further the study.
This led to the identification of Family Healthcare Nursing as an evidence-based best practice.
Methods used in Family nursing
After the research process was done, various methods emerged as the best ways to deal with family therapy. The techniques were taught to the nurses first, who introduced the families later on their own and thus joined hands fully to bring about family nursing.
Families play a vital part in determining the research program, including investigations into drugs’ safety and efficacy.
Families collaborated with academics to design research projects, uncover unfulfilled treatment needs, and define the most critical outcomes for children and their families in a genuinely family-driven system. This is true for both pharmacological and psychological therapies in the study.
Family systems approach
Family systems are always taken into account in this method.
The more the presenting problems reflect the functioning or malfunctioning of the family system, the more likely the treatments will be targeted at influencing system processes.
To put it in another way, the more pronounced the contextual issues are, the more directly and quickly they will be addressed.
Sessions with the nuclear family as a whole present in which real-time interventions are made; sessions with an individual whose changes affect other sections and members of the family. Among the strategies used are work with family subsystems and combinations of various interventions. Dealing with the family, origin issues such as unresolved issues between an adult client and clients and the family from which they came may bring unrest.
Intervention methods may include bringing in affected family members such as parents or siblings, bringing in the entire family of origin, coaching the client on how to return home and deal with specific issues, assisting the client in writing to a parent or other close relative, and other actions.
Functional Family Therapy
It is a family-centered therapy to include the entire family in reducing significant negative in their life. It contains mental disease in a child or parent and school dropout and drug usage. It aims to persuade adolescents and their families to make positive behavioral changes.
Behavior change occurs due to family communication, successful parenting, problem-solving, and conflict resolution, which are all skills that may be learned.
It makes it easier for a family to get access to community resources like schools, case managers, and other child-serving professionals, as well as to encourage transformation across systems and avoid relapse.
It has proven to be a valuable solution for adolescents involved in a system of juvenile justice. It costs less than restricted juvenile imprisonment and residential treatment, and it has far better results in terms of family contact and persistent reduction and social wellbeing of a young person.
Behaviour Theory.
Behavioral techniques are primarily “outside-in” in nature.
That is, they are more likely to concentrate on specific, observable behavior.
Individual and family behavioral approaches both stress the importance of interaction and offer some implications for understanding and altering human interaction.
Interpersonal problem stimulation and reinforcement in interaction are the primary causes of problems in both individuals and families.
A person’s or a group’s actions cause dysfunctional emotions, thoughts, and feelings, as well as other different cultural responses.
Such responses may increase the likelihood of recurrence of dysfunctional behavior, so perpetuating the issues.
The emphasis on learning and interaction is one of the essential parts of learning theory for therapy.
Mutual exploitative tendencies in family contact when one member’s actions stimulate and reinforce the behavior of others.
Social Psychology
Teaching social psychology classes to individuals from the families and reading relevant books and articles in that field for several years have aided in the process of bringing together personality theory and social and cultural resources.
Personality theory eventually became a fundamental organizing concept in social psychology.
Conclusion
When families gain a better understanding of these practices, they will be able to determine what should be accessible and what to request. A majority of families that integrated the techniques had speedy recovery for their patient be it illness, trauma or stress disorders, thereby, demonstrating patient satisfaction.
Families create demand for interventions by requesting them, putting providers under pressure to become experts in and trained in evidence-based techniques.
Families must also be heard by professional groups representing child-serving providers in their efforts to connect community providers with training in the techniques.
Provider education and postgraduate training programs should include the practices.
Families must also inform employers and insurers about the critical need in the private sector for more excellent insurance coverage and benefit design.
Recommendations
Adapting clinical practice to a broader scope and incorporating evidence-based practices is a difficult task that demands strong leadership.
Families can help their states and neighborhoods by working together and identifying successful change agents in the child-serving systems and collaborating with them on system reform.
There are several aspects to consider as families gain a better understanding of the programs that are available to them those that are not in their communities:
- Is a wide range of services available, or is the system based on a crisis?
- Are there any harmful practices, such as unregulated residential facilities or boot camps, in place?
- Is there an excessive reliance on detention centers, which waste taxpayer dollars and deliver poor outcomes?
Families who are knowledgeable about the practices are in the best position to suggest effective alternatives.
Make a case for more research to close the gaps.
There is very little research on effective programs and assistance for children and adolescents with the most severe disorders, such as early-onset bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The treatments are effective for depression and anxiety, depression, borderline personality, conduct problems, and trauma.
We need further study to figure out how to treat these other deadly diseases.
Evidence-based practices should be taught in schools, child welfare organizations, juvenile justice systems, and other affected institutions, including adolescents and children with mental conditions. The government should provide Medicaid funds to pay the cost of the practices for Medicaid-eligible children and families.
The practice interventions are effective, and the public health insurance system should appropriately finance them.
References
Friedman, M. M., Bowden, V. R., & Jones, E. G. (2003). Introduction to the family. MM Friedman, VR Bowden, & EG Jones, Family nursing: Research, theory, and practice.
Hanson, S., & Kaakinen, J. (2005). Theoretical foundations for nursing of families. Family health care nursing. Third ed. Philadelphia: FA Davis, 69-95.
Kaakinen, J. R., Coehlo, D. P., Steele, R., & Robinson, M. (2018). Family health care nursing: Theory, practice, and research. FA Davis.
Leahey, M., & Wright, L. M. (2016). Application of the Calgary Family Assessment and Intervention Models: reflections on the interchange between the personal and the professional. Journal of family nursing, 22(4), 450-459.
The University of St.Augustine for Health Sciences Evidence-based-practice Retrieved on February 6, 2022, from https://www.usa.edu/blog/evidence-based-practice/
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