Canadian Nurses: Impact On Family And Community

Nurses have an ethical and professional duty to provide care directed towards the health of the client, family, and community under their care (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008). Moreover, every patient is a product of a family and families make the backbone of a society; hence, families have a unique impact on the health and well-being of its individual members. Family focused nursing is achieved through practices that consist of collaborative relationships with families and nurses’ sound intervention knowledge and skills. As an art and science, family nursing has evolved over many decades, helping nurses in the way they interact, think, and work with families. This is not limited to the way nurses collect health data, provide interventions

9), “provides nursing care across the lifespan that is informed by a variety of theories relevant to health and healing (e.g., nursing; family; communication and learning; crisis intervention; loss, grief and bereavement; systems; culture; community development; and population health theories)” (p. 10), and “provides nursing care to meet palliative care or end-of-life care needs (e.g., pain and symptom management, psychosocial and spiritual support, and support for significant others)” (p.10), among others. In this patient’s situation, first I had an open mind to the patient and her family, while recognizing the difficulties they must be facing with the sudden cancer diagnosis, language barriers, and other family dynamics. While I knew that I had so much ahead of me during my shift, I created an opportunity for family involvement in their care by asking what they wanted for their day and how they wanted care provided particularly bearing in mind the gender difference between the patient and myself. Apart from providing nursing care to the patient, I encouraged the primary care giver to take periods of rest to prevent burn