Explorations in Family Nursing

The continuing shift in health care provision from hospitals into the community places an increasing burden on the family as the primary source of care. Explorations in Family Nursing looks at how nurses can adopt a more collaborative approach to working with families to both facilitate their task as carers and promote the health and well-being of the whole family.The first part of the book explores the theoretical underpinnings of family nursing, drawing insights from family therapy and systems theory and looks for a definition of the family which is appropriate to all situations including co-habiting couples, families separated by divorce, blended families and homosexual couples. The book goes on to establish the principles of family nursing explaining the process of making assessments, planning interventions and evaluating progress. Chapters on caring for chronically and terminally ill children, patients in intensive care, adolescent problems, the elderly and children with learning disabilities demonstrate the scope for applying family nursing strategies widely both in the community and in hospital. The book concludes with an evaluation of the opportunities, limitations and challenges which family nursing presents for nurses in the 1990s.Explorations in Family is suitable for both practitioners and students on pre-registration courses. Challenging nurses to adopt a more collaborative approach to care this book makes a timely and relevant contribution to the development of nursing practice.Dorothy Whyte is Senior Lecturer in Nursing Studies at Edinburgh University.