Nursing and personal experience

¶ … Family centered care is a noble belief deeming family members and health care staff as equal partners and working collectively to address the needs of the kid. Competency rises when a system synergizes as nurses and patient / family member's honors each other's commitment to heath care. Patient family centered care is a continuous process in order to address the needs and duties of families (St. Jude Children's Hospital, 2014).

Words and concepts that describe this phenomenon

Dignity, respect, information sharing, participation and teamwork

Identifying terms (concepts) that can summarize, label or name this phenomenon

Each family and child is different: Families have diverse backgrounds, life experiences, customs and traditions, education, cultural values and notions. Care should be facilitated equally to all patients whilst catering the choices and needs of each family (St. Jude Children's Hospital, 2014).

Open communication between family, patients and healthcare staff: It's productive to openly voice the positives and the negatives for enhancing and developing competent healthcare practices and policies. Hence open communication can certainly improve and augment patient / family's healthcare experience (St. Jude Children's Hospital, 2014).

Empowering family's role in healthcare: When parents and patients realize their relevance in healthcare, they can play a more pivotal role in child's healthcare (St. Jude Children's Hospital, 2014).

Families play an equal role in quality and safety in a healthcare system: Working collectively, the staff and families have diversified understanding about healthcare and share valuable knowledge (St. Jude Children's Hospital, 2014).

List of definitions that most closely relate to Family Centered Care

Dignity: a manner of showing self-respect and seriousness (Merriam-Webster, 2014).

Respect: a sense of admiration for a person or a thing (Merriam-Webster, 2014).

Involvement: being included (a person or a thing) in something (Merriam-Webster, 2014).

Collaboration: to work with more than one person for attaining an objective (Merriam-Webster, 2014).

Beliefs and thoughts of others in the discipline regarding Family Centered Care

Common characteristics and aspects of FCC:

According to IPFCC, FCC is defined as 'a method for planning, delivering and evaluating healthcare which is based on beneficial alliance between families, patients and healthcare providers' (http://www.i FCC.org / faq.html). It's a shift in paradigm for healthcare providers for empowering better healthcare decision making.

The evidence is lucid pertaining FCC concept and its attributes of patient alliance. The writer has explained the outcomes of the overall review by describing:

Partnership process

Antecedents

Outcomes of FCC

Framework

Repetitive theme has shown that FCC is based around the fundamental relationship of patient / family and healthcare providers. This key relationship grows from caring, trusting and balancing off power. The key aspects of this relationship are:

Dignity and mutual respect

Information and sharing of knowledge

Patient/family involvement

Shared decision making

Realization of patient / family as essential contributors (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Precursors for FCC:

This mixed evidence sheds some light on the various phases by which FCC can be understood. Developing and fortifying a caring and trustworthy association along with balancing of power should take place for instituting FCC in an acute care setting. Trust must persevere and power differentials must be removed for patient / family to involve in care. Removing power differentials is essential for facilitating information exchange and knowledge sharing. By active involvement, patient / family becomes empowered. Lastly, an empowered patient / family environment results in better healthcare decision making (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Framework of FCC: FCC development phases and nurses' activities

Respect and Self-respect:

At the core of FCC and a basic principle of balancing of power, literature indicates that nurses should show a level of respect for patient / family and retain their respect during the course of hospitalization. It can entail many actions for instance, listening to family's opinion and choices (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Caring, trusting, and balancing of power:

The relevance of a caring, trustworthy and balancing of power is applicable to the entire healthcare staff.

Individual nursing actions which assist in balancing of power consists of:

Active listening

Taking patient / family's opinion on healthcare

Round the clock family attendance (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Knowledge and information sharing: Combined decision making:

Knowledge and information sharing is initiated by the nurses opening up and sharing knowledge about the illness in question and the patient opens up about his personal experiences regarding illness (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

This mutual sharing of information in turns leads to better decision making. A strong alliance is formed when nurse and patient / family collectively take decisions. Although the concept isn't new, yet it hasn't been implemented in acute care hospitals due to lack of awareness (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Engagement, Empowerment, and Partnership:

The prime concept of FCC is the alliance between patients / families during the course of patient care. According to the literature, there are three activities which the nurses can employ to augment family / patient care and engagement:

Patient / family-based communication

Bedside shift report

Patient / family-based multidisciplinary rounds

It's important for the nurse to deal with the patient / families in a patient centered manner. A researcher has defined patient centered communication (PCC) consisting of:

Introductions

Clarity

Empathy

Immediacy

Humor

Listening (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Immediacy pertains to behavior where the nurse is mentally attentive and physically present to the patient at hand. Usage of humor can boost relationship with families and patients and cut down moments of immense anxiety (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

The bedside shift report builds patient / family relationship where patient / family is instrumental in furnishing input on shift to shift hand off. Including patient / families in care can furnish concrete data for instance, one researcher concluded that taking input from parents while determining the pain level of a child showed plausible differences in family's and staff's perception level (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Results of FCC:

Nine quantitative researches showed the results of FCC. Out of nine, five employed a quasi-experimental design. One research was based in Pakistan, while other eight were based in U.S.. Indicators of FCC processes consist of:

Family centered rounds

Bedside nursing shift report

Staff's behavior regarding patient centered communication

Parent / patient involvement in care

In case of patient / family outcome, the relevant factors are:

Parent contentment

Family experience

Parent satisfaction

Parent perceived stress

Emotional state of parents

Willingness to learn

Health system outcomes are based on hospital charges and duration for family-based rounds. The staff outcomes consist of:

Staff's notion about FCC

Comprehending patient care plan

Notions of teamwork

Sharing information

Contentment with bedside change of shift report

The research didn't include FCC processes and patient safety relationship (Mastro, Flynn, and Preuster, 2014).

Strategies and resources for FCC

In their research, Dokken and Ahmann (2012) focused on rising to the organizational and attitudinal challenges in order to put family centered care in effect. Strategies and resources for the nurses to make use of are given below. They consist of three categories:

Educating the team about patient and family centered care

Educating the colleagues in order to generate awareness and understanding

Developing proper infrastructure with the help of top management

For promoting these methods, many organizations which have implemented this are mentioned as well as their learning and reports from applying these practices are also mentioned (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

The 1st strategy: Personal and team education

Most physicians deem that they practice and implement, patient and family centered care, but in reality, they aren't aware about the core concepts. A supporter of patient and family centered care needs to be well informed about methods regarding patient and family centered care. Apart from this, he must be well aware of the patient and family centered care implemented in top organizations (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

During the course of organization change, its handy to create a core team for educating the team members and transmit the knowledge to colleagues as well (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Taking an initiative

For initiating an action, the team can make an evaluation of the changes needed to make in an organization and note its strengths as well. IPFCC provides a free of cost evaluation manual, Strategies for Leadership - Patient- and Family- Centered Care: A Hospital Self-Assessment Inventory. The evaluation will take certain aspects in consideration as written below (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012):

Are families entertained round the clock; during when nurses shifts change, rounds and procedures and resuscitation?

Is the environment family friendly or it shuts them out for instance unwelcoming signs and absence of family space?

Is input taken from children and family members in various ways?

Fellows from the small multidisciplinary team can play their part in this form of evaluation. Apart from that, including the family members in the team can also take their input in consideration as they have relevant experiences pertaining patient and family centered care (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Useful resources for familiarizing with concepts

The team or an individual can amass information and data relevant to patient and family centered care which will shed some light on patient and family centered care apart from providing relevant instances as well. IPFCC is a beginner's guide to on numerous topics including the following:

Pediatric care

Bedside rounds

Discharge and transition planning for pediatrics and NCIU

Adult heath care for youngsters with disabilities (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Computer simulated site visits

Computer simulated site visits can be made use of for gleaning knowledge about the patient and family-based programs and evaluating how different organizations have implemented their patient and family-based programs. Organizations under study should be of similar size and employees as well as keeping contact with them is all the more necessary (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Professional communications

Useful information can be gleaned from being in contact with pediatric hospitals, since they are based on the model of patient and family centered care dissuading family as visitors and promote the concept of family members integral to their child health care team (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Training Sessions

The training sessions are facilitated the concept of patient and family centered care. One instance is the usage of Webinars services provided by many professional nursing associations based around patient and family centered care. Webinars are easy to conduct as they require an internet connection and employees can be assembled at a convenient time. While taking part in Webinars, a few factors should be pondered upon such as:

Are the speakers from well-known patient and family-based nursing organizations and impart concrete content?

Is the information relevant to principles of patient and family centered care? (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012)?

The 2nd strategy: Educating others

With added information and knowledge about critical and fundamental concepts of patient and family centered care, intimate knowledge of practical strategies and programs, individuals and team can bring their colleagues to speed as well. As education becomes compulsory, it soon becomes clear that educating organizational leaders and medical staff is a necessity as well (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Whilst educating the entire organization, it's imperative to include the family members as well. Sometimes, organizations are unaware of a Family Advisory Council, but families should be brought into the loop too (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).

Real life experiences and professional encounters

Stories are necessary for facilitating change in an organization. Develop opportunities for nursing staff and families to reflect upon professional and personal encounters which can boost patient and family centered care. After the family members become comfortable in the environment, they can be given an overview of the patient and family centered care. It stimulates noble intentions of the nurses as well (Dokken and Ahmann, 2012).