NRS-429VN0500 Family Centered Health Promotion

Family Assessment

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Family Assessment

1.

Health practitioners must be able to develop an effective family health assessment as this will help in obtaining information that will be useful in creating a personalized intervention that promotes health. According to Green (2018), a family health assessment is the healthcare practitioner’s professional perceptions on the given family unit based on the information obtained like norms, culture, regulations and other theoretical abilities. Using Gordon’s eleven functional health patterns, this writer was able to develop a questionnaire that was used to retrieve information from Mr. Ken’s family. All the family members provided consent to the research and the writer practice high autonomy levels.

Mr. Ken’s family unit consists of four family members, the dad Ken (50), mum Maria (48), son Mike (25) and daughter Gloria (20). This an African American family that is based on Tempe Arizona and from the middle to low-class socioeconomic level. This family lives in a single unit house. The mother and the two children practice Christian believes and the father is nonbeliever and atheist. The family lives in a community where most people are Caucasian and African American among other diverse cultures.

2.

Mr. Ken who is the father, owns a local bar in the community and he is a biker. He rides his bikes to and from work every day. Also, he is a member of the motorbike club in the community. Ken is alcoholic and a chain smoker a well. Ken is diabetic, obese and hypertensive. The mother Maria is an inventory clerk in a local organization and she works the night shift. She spends the day sleeping and organizing the family meal and other house chores. She is depressed, fatigue, mild hypertension and has visual problems as she uses glasses. The son Mike is obese, anti-social and he like video games. He has been going for immunization but no regular dental checkups. Also, Mike completed college and he is looking for a job. The daughter Gloria has no health problems and she has been attending dental checkup and immunization as required but she is a social media addict. Gloria has not been attending gynecologist checkups. The family likes to eat fast food and carbonated drinks as they are easy to prepare and easily available.

All the family members have no regular sleeping time and eating times as they rarely have a common meal except on weekends. The kids can sleep late at night as they are alone, and the father can come home or sleep at midnight. The mother sleeps during the day as she works the night shift. Mr. Ken is not serious with his medication for diabetic and blood pressure and sometimes this affects his health condition.

The wife is fatigued and depressed in trying to manage the family and work. She is the one that instills order in the family but she cannot be able to oversee everything by herself. Generally, the family has poor physical exercise from the dad, who rarely walks to work; the son is always playing video games and the daughter on social media.

The couple has some problems with their sexual relationship as they are all not active and willing. The wife blames the husband for poor performance and failure to seek medical help. Both Mike and Gloria are comfortable with their sexual orientation. The wife is coping with the family the husband despite the hardship and she is always seeking counsel from the local church members.

3.

According to the information provided by Ken’s family, it is evident that the functional health pattern strengths in the family are self-identity. All the family members are proud of self-identifies and what they think about themselves. In terms of weakness, the family is faced with diverse nutritional problems as they consume fast foods and carbonated drinks. Also, the family is not regular with medical practices like follow-ups, the proper taking of medication, lack of physical exercise that leads to obesity and poor dental and gynecology checkups. Also, the mother has a sensory problem as she uses glasses.

From a professional point of view, I believe that the main barrier for the family to incorporate healthy practices is the lack of information and exposure to health promotion, ignorance/irresponsibility, and low-income levels. The family lacks vast information about how their poor lifestyle can lead to complicated health problems especially to the elderly. Ignorance/irresponsibility in the sense that the father understands that alcohol and smoking are not good for his health but still ignore the reality. Also, low income plays a vital role in limiting access to healthy food, medical checkups and exposure.

4.

The Bowen family systems theory provides that every member of the family is important and tries to understand each person as a unit. This theory provide that it is hard to understand a person in a family separately from the member of the family in the sense that families are interconnection and emotional units. This means that a problem that faces one person in the family may have direct or indirect implications to the other members of the family (Family Nursing, 2016). NRS-429VN0500 Family Centered Health Promotion

According to the interview, Ken’s family is faced with diverse challenges like conflict-oriented problems and poor health practices. The incorporation of approaches like structural family therapy can help in gaining more understanding of every person in the family and develop an intervention for them respectively. Comprehensive and frequent counseling can be helpful in providing information about healthy practices and the consequences as well as approaches that can be used to promote a healthy lifestyle in the family. According to Bowen (2018), a positive change in one of the family members may facilitate positive change to the rest of the family.

References

Bowen, M. (2018). Eight Concepts. Retrieved from: https://thebowencenter.org/theory/eightconcepts/

Family Nursing. (2016). In Nursing Theory. Retrieved from http://nursing-theory.org/theories-and-models/family-nursing.php

Green, S. Z. (2018). Understanding Families and Health Promotion. In Health Promotion: Health and Wellness Across the Continuum. Retrieved from: https://lc.gcumedia.com/nrs429vn/health-wellness-health-and-wellness-across-thecontinuum/v1.1/#/chapter/4