Florence Nightingale's Environmental Model: Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales

Florence Nightingale’s environmental model discusses caring for the family as well as the patient and the effect the environment has on the patient’s healing (Friedman et al., 2003). Even though Florence Nightingale did not present this theory, her views on the environment’s impact is the foundation of this model. She compared the impact of home care to hospital care environment. Florence Nightingale believed that hospital settings with a bad environment will negatively impact the patient’s healing and an unsatisfactory home environment can bring sickness among the healthy (Friedman et al., 2003). She also valued caring for the patient and family members to promote optimal health. This is similar to Roy’s adaptation model stating environmental

These concepts still apply and are implemented in today’s nursing care in multiple health care organizations. For example, changes in my current health care organization during construction of the replacement hospital expanded room sizes and designed additional sitting areas in patient rooms to include family members in the nursing care. Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales (F-COPES) is an assessment tool to assess the how family members adjust psychologically to the stress and evaluate their coping mechanisms (Friedman et al., 2003). An article in a nursing journal discussed the use of this tool to evaluate a group of heart transplant patients in a study to measure coping behaviors. The F-COPES tool measured five different coping strategies, including: acquiring social support, reframing, seeking spiritual support, mobilizing family to accept help and passive appraisal, with Scottish and American patients (Kaba & Shanley, 1997). This article determined that American heart patients were found to score higher acquiring social support and mobilizing family to help. In this example, the F-COPES tool evaluates the coping mechanisms of the four components of the nursing metaparadigm with the heart transplant patient (person) coping with the stress by incorporating help from the environment (family) to promote optimal