Honors Credit: Family Nursing

My honors topic is family focused nursing. I feel that promoting and managing health at a family level is extremely important and beneficial. By providing care and educational opportunities to the family we hope that we are able to help all its members. Families work as a team, and when the entire team is focused on making healthy lifestyle choices it promotes adherence. Additionally, many families need each other for support when it comes to health issues. Children rely on their parents to keep them in good health, sick individuals may lean on family members for help and emotional support, and the elderly may rely on their children when their own health begins to fail. Family is incredibly important, especially when it comes to health and well-being.

The health of a family and the health of a community go hand in hand achieving a close relationship where one plays off the other. One example of this relationship that came to mind was immunizations. Communities must provide access to immunization services and families must take advantage of them, one does not work without the other.  I chose this image because it reminds us that it is important that everyone takes on the responsibility of getting vaccinated. Herd immunity, “a state in which those not immune to an infectious agent will be protected if a certain proportion of the population has been vaccinated of is otherwise immune”, is an example of how individual families affect the overall health of a community (Nies & McEwen, 2011, p. 497).

The family systems theory, which states that “the family is viewed as a system that continually interacts with its members and the environment”, further promotes the idea that family and community health are linked (Hockenberry & Wilson, 2011, p. 47). In order for a family to thrive it must have access to necessary resources which the community, or environment, provides. The community can be viewed as one large family made up of many, smaller families that work together to achieve optimum health status. The community is responsible for providing resources to families in order to keep them healthy. Immunizations, as I mentioned earlier, are not the only example of this. Others include food programs such as Women, Infants and Children (WIC), health care facilities such as doctor’s offices and hospitals, health promotion facilities such as the YMCA, and countless others. These programs are all beneficial to promoting health, but they are useless if families do not take advantage of them. Families must take responsibility for their own health and use these facilities for their intended benefits. It is the job of families to keep up to date on immunizations, seek out medical attention when they are ill and promote good health by eating well and exercising. A community that provides resources to maintain optimal health will foster healthy families, which in turn will create a healthy community. Families and communities are separate entities that must work together as one system to achieve the most ideal outcomes, especially when it comes to health.

References

Hockenberry, M.J., & Wilson, D. (Eds.).  (2011). Wong’s nursing care of infants and

 children (9th ed.) St. Louis, MO: Saunders/Elsevier.

Nies, M.A. & McEwen, M. (2011). Community/public health nursing: Promotion the

 health of populations (5th ed.) St. Louis, MO: Saunders/Elsevier.