As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

Tips to improve patient education

Preventing re-hospitalization is a huge responsibility, especially in consideration of costly penalties that are levied for early readmissions. To accomplish this, nurses need to constantly improve patient teaching and education prior to discharge. Some of the things nurses can do to advance patient education include:

  • Delegate more responsibilities to support staff and be more focused on patient education.
  • Begin educating patients with every encounter from admission.
  • Find out what the patient already knows. Correct any misinformation.
  • Feed patients information in layman’s terms. Utilize visual aids as often as possible.
  • Question their understanding of the care, and plan for the next lesson.
  • Use return demonstration when administering care. Involve the patient from the very first treatment.
  • Ask the patient to tell you how they would explain (step-by-step) their disease or treatment to their loved one.
  • Make sure the patient understands the medications as you administer them. Make sure they understand how and when to refill medications.
  • Provide patients with information about signs and symptoms of their condition that will require immediate attention.

Five strategies for patient education success

Teaching patients is an important aspect of nursing care. Whether teaching a new mom how to bathe a newborn baby or instructing an adult who is living with a chronic heart disease, a successful outcome depends on the quality of the nurse’s instruction and support. Consider these five strategies.

1. Take advantage of educational technology

Technology has made patient education materials more accessible. Educational resources can be customized and printed out for patients with the touch of a button. Make sure the patient’s individualized needs are addressed. Don't simply hand the patient a stack of papers to read, review them with patients to ensure they understand the instructions and answer questions that arise. Some resources are available in several languages.

2. Determine the patient’s learning style

Similar information may be provided by a range of techniques. In fact, providing education using different modalities reinforces teaching. Patients have different learning styles so ask if your patient learns best by watching a DVD or by reading. A hands on approach where the patient gets to perform a procedure with your guidance is often the best method.

3. Stimulate the patient’s interest

It's essential that patients understand why this is important. Establish rapport, ask and answer questions, and consider specific patient concerns. Some patients may want detailed information about every aspect of their health condition while others may want just the facts, and do better with a simple checklist.

4. Consider the patient’s limitations and strengths

Does the patient have physical, mental, or emotional impairments that impact the ability to learn? Some patients may need large print materials and if the patient is hearing impaired, use visual materials and hands on methods instead of simply providing verbal instruction. Always have patients explain what you taught them. Often people will nod “yes” or say that they comprehend what is taught even if they have not really heard or understood. Consider factors such as fatigue and the shock of learning a critical diagnosis when educating patients.

5. Include family members in health care management

Involving family members in patient teaching improves the chances that your instructions will be followed. In many cases, you will be providing most of the instruction to family members. Families play a critical role in health care management.

Teaching patients and their families can be one of the most challenging, yet also rewarding elements of providing nursing care. First-rate instruction improves patient outcomes dramatically.

The value of patient education resources

For further resources that will strength your organization’s patient-teaching, let Lippincott Advisor help. Our best-in-class, evidence-based decision support software for institutions includes over 16,000 customizable patient teaching handouts and content entries.

The best way to get to know a family is to conduct a formal family assessment. As a required component of Part C of IDEA, the family assessment offers providers an opportunity to sit down with a family and develop an understanding of who they are. Based on theoretical frameworks offered earlier, it is essential that the family assessment include components about the daily life of the family as well as the environment in which they live.

As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

By offering a strength-based approach that encompasses a family’s culture and community, the assessment provides information that can be used to determine appropriate goals and interventions. Most important, the family assessment is voluntary – family members may share details about themselves or share nothing. Building trust with a family is an important part of implementing the family assessment well.

Ultimately, the family assessment guides the development of the IFSP or the IEP and helps providers choose evidence-based practices (EBP). The information collected needs to detail a family’s strengths, culture, routines, and goals. The family assessment is part of the evaluation, but also can be used anytime to understand changes within each family. As an information gathering tool for the IFSP/IEP, the family assessment focuses on the family routines and the child's abilities, needs, and supports. It should also focus on the resources the family uses to support child development.

Family Assessment Tools

There are many tools that can be used to conduct family assessment. Each collects specific information about family systems, functioning, culture, and experiences. Regardless of the tool selected, several key ideas to consider when selecting a tool for each specific family include:

  • Timing (before or at the beginning of service delivery to design strategies, during intervention to assess effectiveness)
  • Method (conversation, checklist, or questionnaire)
  • Data collected (family interests, priorities, concerns, routines, traditions, resources and activities)
  • Developmental framework (child development)
  • Reporting method (method information is shared with family/practitioners to inform IEP/IFSP development and EBP)
  • Requirements for early intervention or early childhood providers (active listening, feedback and sharing information)
  • Comfortable for family (confidentiality of information and tone of the tool)

Through active listening, feedback, and sharing information, a family assessment is able to capture the life of a family in a way that feeds directly into service delivery. It should engage family members (not just parents) in conversations with each other or with the professional to consider the present, the future, successes, and challenges.

The benefits of Family Based Assessment include:

  • It facilitates family participation
  • It helps providers understand the family’s strengths, goals, and priorities
  • It helps identify the family system and resources
  • It helps to reflect the voices and choices of the family
  • It reflects the families’ needs so that intervention can be tailored to address those needs

Challenges to Family Based Assessment include:

Providers may

  • Feel uncomfortable or intrusive when conducting a family based assessment
  • Lack confidence in their ability and resources to address the family’s issues and concerns
  • Disagree with the family and the family’s priorities

Families may

  • Refuse to participate - It is voluntary for a family to participate
  • Offer misleading or conflicting information about themselves
  • Not “buy into” the process
  • Have different communications styles or preferences

Providers may

  • Come back to the information as they get to know the family
  • Reassure family information is confidential
  • Explain the purpose of collecting the information to guide program planning
  • Use the family’s preferred communication style
  • Ensure conduct of the conversation is culturally acceptable

As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

Activity:

Select the appropriate phrase for the sentences below.

  1. The family assessment is/is not conducted to find out more information about a child and his daily routines and activities.
  2. Answer: is

  3. The family assessment is/is not an evaluation of a family.
  4. Answer: is not

  5. The family assessment is/is not voluntary.
  6. Answer: is

  7. The family assessment is/is not a way to value a family.
  8. Answer: is

  9. The family assessment is/is not an opportunity for families to tell their stories and what is important to them.
  10. Answer: is

  11. The family assessment is/is not the specialists’ opinions about what is best for the child.
  12. Answer: is not

  13. The family assessment is/is not an opportunity to understand families in terms of their structures, strengths, resources, priorities, and needs.
  14. Answer: is

  15. The family assessment is/is not a way to help identify strategies that improve the life of a family and child.
  16. Answer: is

  17. The family assessment is/is not always a formal process.
  18. Answer: is not

  19. The family assessment is/is not a way to empower families to make decisions regarding their children.
  20. Answer: is

More information and activities related to family assessment are discussed in more detail in the Evaluation and Assessment of Infants, Toddlers, and Young Children module. Visit or revisit this section to learn more about family assessment and how it fits into screening, evaluation, and assessment. It will provide more specific information about tools and requirements for family assessments.

It is important to remember that it takes time to build relationships and trust with families. Addressing the family’s values, priorities, and concerns leads to relationships that address the developmental needs of the child and builds family confidence in meeting their child’s needs.

As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

Practice your skills using a family assessment. Download the RBI Report Form and use page 6 (Feeding) to take notes during the following video.

Routines Based Interview (McWilliams) Feeding

As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

  1. Were you able to pull enough information from the video to complete the form?
  2. Do you have some additional questions?
  3. What would you need to be able to implement this with families you currently serve?

As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

Questions:

How has family assessment helped you build relationships with families and support you as you plan?
What are three strategies you would share with a friend? What are three things you would say are most challenging?

As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment
As a future professional how can you efficiently conduct family health assessment

What is being used to facilitate the process of defining family nursing problems?

to facilitate the process of defining family nursing problems, a classification system of family nursing problems was developed and field tested in 1978. is anursing judgment on wellness state or condition based on client's performance,current competencies or clinical data but no explicit expression of client desire.

What question should the nurse ask to assess the function of a family?

The nurse needs to ask about any past financial problems and how the family dealt with them. This information helps the nurse to assess the family's coping abilities. Similarly, asking about the family's addiction history may help the nurse learn how the family handles crises.

In which step of nursing process is important listening to the patient's comments and questions about his health status?

During the assessment phase, the nurse will look at any subjective and objective data collected in the patient's history.

What is defined as a set of actions by which the nurse measures the status of the family?

Family Health Assessment ◦ This involves a set of actions by which the status of a family as client, its ability to maintain itself as a system and functioning unit, and its ability to maintain wellness, prevent, control, or resolve problems in order to achieve health and well-being among its members are measured.