Information on health literacy is essential for children, because health literacy, not to be confused with general literacy, is well-defined as the point at which people can acquire and understand elementary health facts and amenities required to make correct health choices. In today’s hurried lifestyle, we have to guarantee that every teachable moment is presented to the children with excellence (Osborne, 2012).
The initial step that the author would take is figuring out the most important information the children should know, and how to bring it all together so the children would have no problem understanding the ideas involved in health literacy. The next step would be to split the essential actions kids need to learn into the following three categories: first, basic survival actions; second, actions that are the easiest to do; and third, resources available to help in taking those actions.
At the beginning of the assessment phase, a nurse plays the role of an improvised teacher, who has to explain in child-friendly and simple language the basics of health literacy to the children (Hernandez, 2013). At the end of the program, the nurse should be seen in the light of an examiner who is going to determine if the children have learned the information and can navigate among complex concepts, including being able to explain these concepts in their own words.
The additional resources that would be needed to implement this program and help the nurse teach the children the fundamentals of health literacy are various handouts, colorful presentations, cards with lively illustrations, audio/video recordings, etc.
A Family in Crisis
The foremost factor influencing the situation is the fact that Juanita Brown is a single mother. She is trying to make a living to support her three children and her mother. In addition, racial discrimination or stereotyping might be involved, as she couldn’t get a good education and ended up not having either any marketable skills or a job. Juanita Brown might also have psychological problems, as her life is all too real, and the general state of affairs is bad.
This is definitely an example of a crisis situation. In this case, the woman is dealing with a dispositional crisis that turned into a crisis resulting from traumatic stress, which then evolved into a psychiatric emergency. As an explanation, we can point to the fact that the woman has become a single mother, lost her father, and now supports a mother with diabetes and hypertension.
The first step is to identify the event that has led the client to seek help at the present time. Armed with this information, the author is going to outline the major problems with which the woman needs help. The nurse is going to discuss Juanita’s current style of dealing with her stress, and propose help in zones where even a slight change would be useful in solving the current crisis and avoiding crises in the future. The nurse is going to create a plan with goals that have to be met in order to deal with the existing crisis (Dochterman et al., 2013).
In the case where many families in the population are experiencing a similar problem, the nurse should act according to the situation and develop a strategy of nursing interventions that would cover the major crises in the area. That also includes the analysis of the common factors causing or contributing to these crises.
References
Dochterman, J. M., Bulechek, G. M., Butcher, H. K., & Wagner, C. (2013). Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC)6: Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC). Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Hernandez, L. M. (2013). Health literacy: Improving health, health systems, and health policy around the world: Workshop summary. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
Osborne, H. (2012). Health Literacy from A to Z (2nd ed.). Sudbury, MS: Jones and Bartlett.