Introduction
While being a part of a multidisciplinary team, nurses play a key role in helping a family to adjust to the occurring circumstances and providing practical and emotional support during an entire treatment course. As seen in J.L.’s case, the way a nurse establishes communication with family members usually has a direct impact on what the outcomes of a treatment course will be. Should the nursing staff neglect their duties or treat patients without a proper level of care and respect, the state of patients’ health might quickly change to critical.
In the meantime, “when patients’ needs are prioritized, they engage in treatment and treatments are more effective” (Clay & Parsh, 2016, p. 40). Thus, a correct understanding of a nurse’s duties and effective collaboration with family members appear to be the factors that influence a recovery process.
Strategies for Successful Integration of Family Members
Focusing attention on clients’ needs arrives as the first and the primary strategy when the need to engage family members arises. It is of huge importance that clinicians consider the preferences of a patient when planning family-centered care. One can state with complete certainty that an emergency department nurse was not guided by the principles of a given strategic model when she asked J.L.’s parents to wait for an hour. The severity of a young woman’s situation required immediate hospitalization with further medical screening (Parent, Jones, Phillips, Stojan, & House, 2016).
Another strategy involves unveiling the beneficial sides of patient-centered care. This interventional model ensures that all concerns related to clinical environments are excluded since a patient is not subject to direct doctors’ intervention. Nurses need to explain to the closest relatives that family values are the key factors encouraging an individual to recover faster. When a person is surrounded by loving people he/she feels needed and, therefore, acquires an additional goal to get back to normal life. This motivates an individual to engage in treatment as well.
Family-Centered Care Strategies to Apply to the Case Study
One of the strategies that should have been used to provide a required level of care to J.L. and her family is called “Communicate and Collaborate” (Clay & Parsh, 2016). This strategy involves an open discussion of symptoms and complaints with family members and the development of a healthcare plan to reduce the reoccurrence of these symptoms. Another strategic model is based on the promotion of health literacy.
The clinical staff should have considered the racial and cultural peculiarities of people they communicated with. Also, they needed to make everything possible to examine their daughter with no delays, while still keeping J.L.’s parents notified about treatment procedures.
As to the partnership between family members and nurses, one may suggest that such a form of cooperation carries great value in terms of expanding one’s working skills and professional knowledge. The more nurses communicate with patients’ relatives the more information they can receive about clients’ state of health and the more effective their practice becomes. Also, direct communication with family members helps to achieve a required level of patient trust and creates a premise for his/her faster recovery.
References
Clay, A. M., & Parsh, B. (2016). Patient-and family-centered care: It’s not just for pediatrics anymore. AMA Journal of Ethics, 18(1), 40-44.
Parent, K., Jones, K., Phillips, L., Stojan, J. N., & House, J. B. (2016). Teaching patient-and family-centered care: Integrating shared humanity into medical education curricula. AMA Journal of Ethics, 18(1), 24-32.