What is the difference between family-oriented and family-focused nursing care?
Family-oriented and family-focused nursing care are two interrelated concepts. The first one refers to the responsibilities a health practitioner has towards a family as a subject of assessment and treatment. The framework of family-oriented nursing provides the instruments for collection, organization, and interpretation of data about families (Lundy & Janes, 2003). The collected information is used as the basis for health education, and stimulation of positive behavioral changes aimed to maintain the health of all family members. Working according to the family-oriented care model, a nurse assesses such aspects of family life as communication patterns, health history, health potential, self-regulation, and coping mechanisms, etc.
While the concept of family-oriented care denotes the overall target population, family-centered care implies an individualized approach towards patients and the establishment of patient-nurse partnerships. Like any form of patient-focused therapy, it means that patients should have a dominant role in dialogs with care providers while nurses should be more mindful, emphatic, and sensitive towards patients’ needs and interests (Epstein & Street, 2011).
As stated by Kuo et al. (2012), “family-centered care is a partnership approach to health care decision-making between the family and health care provider” (p. 297). The collaborative approach in family-centered nursing is always founded on respect, sharing credible information, and negotiation which fosters the improved quality of care and leads to better treatment outcomes. It is possible to say that the principle of respect and honoring differences is a key element in family-centered nursing care. Inconsistency with this idea, nurses always pay great attention to families’ cultural and linguistic traditions, as well as their care preferences and beliefs (Kuo et al., 2012).
Family-oriented care has a wider meaning. It regards the family as a unit of care and comprises a set of actions aimed to assess, diagnose, and improve family health. Family-oriented nursing is generalized and simply gives a sense of direction in practice. And the major distinction of family-oriented practice from family-centered one is the lack of focus on the consideration of families’ characteristics.
What are community-based services in the promotion of health for families?
The provision of community-based services in the promotion of health for families is based on the evaluation of strengths, weaknesses, and potential risks associated with the environment in which they live (Child Welfare Information Gateway, n.d.).
Such evaluation is systematic and covers such spheres as home, school, and neighborhood. Care providers use community assessment data for informing families about local social and natural support sources they may address to deal with the adverse situation in life more effectively. Community-based service must be combined with a family-centered care framework because the multicultural backgrounds of family members should be considered to provide better service and give relevant information and, in this way, increase the efficiency of services.
Community-based (CB) services provided by several family-centered networks aim to promote the sound development and welfare of both young and older family members. Any CB services are usually provided by a local government or social service organizations, but, nowadays, private agencies render these services as well. The major goals of CB programs are family preservation, mentoring, helping families to cope with mental or social-emotional issues, and linking them with social and community supports (Beech Brook, 2016).
Providers of CB services may implement a great variety of treatment models based on families’ needs and desired outcomes. For example, specialists may help to resolve parent-child conflicts in foster homes or assist teenagers in coping with their psychological crises and inform them about proximate peer support services, etc.
References
Child Gateway Information Gateway. (n.d.). Guiding principles of systems of care: Community-based services.
Epstein, R. M., & Street, R. L. (2011). The values and value of patient-centered care. Annals of Family Medicine, 9(2), 100–103.
Lundy, K. S., & Janes, S. (2003). Essentials of community-based nursing. Boston: Jones and Bartlett.
Beech Brook. (2016). Family and community-based services. Web.
Kuo, D. Z., Houtrow, A. J., Arango, P., Kuhlthau, K. A., Simmons, J. M., & Neff, J. M. (2012). Family-centered care: Current applications and future directions in pediatric health care. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 16(2), 297–305.