Family Assessment

A family assessment is a method of collecting and organizing information about a family's structure and function. As a nurse, you'll perform family assessments and initiate interventions to promote positive health outcomes and support the family's wellbeing.

A family can be defined as a group of people that depend on each other for physical, emotional or economic support. They're also bound together in relationships either by blood marriage adoption or by choice.

Now, individual families can be better understood by considering their structure and function. Family structure refers to the family's organization which includes the individuals who make up the family, their relationships with each other and how they interact with each other and other social systems.

A family's internal structure includes the individual members within the family. For example, a family may consist of a married couple which may or may not have Children or stepchildren or a family can be a multi adult household, which can include a cohabiting couple and multiple generations of family members who share a home.

Families also have an external structure which refers to extended family members who are considered outside of the immediate family, like aunts, uncles and cousins, the external structure also includes the family's associations with their community, like with work, school, churches and other institutions.

Lastly, families have contextual structures which refer to their ethnicity, race, social, class and religion. Next, family function refers to the family's activities that meet the needs of individual family members, the family as a whole and family's relationship with the community.

There are five primary functions the family performs first. There's the economic function which includes how the family makes decisions about managing expenses such as housing insurance, savings and buying other goods and services for the family.

Next is the reproductive function or the ability to raise Children within the family and community. There is also a socialization function in which families teach Children how to fit into society and carry on cultural traditions.

Then there's the affective function, meaning how members create a sense of belonging and develop caring relationships. Lastly, there's the health care function where family members engage in health promotion, illness prevention and care for ill family members.

Family functions can also be categorized as instrumental or expressive instrumental functioning, describes activities of daily living such as cooking, eating, taking medications, hygiene and sleeping.

Expressive functioning includes how the family communicates with one another, including both verbal and non verbal communication and how the family solves problems.

Additionally, it includes the roles of each family member, how members influence each other common beliefs they hold and alliances formed between family members.

Now, as the nurse, your primary goals are to gather information about the family structure and functions and initiate interventions and services to promote positive health outcomes and support the family's wellbeing.

Begin your assessment with a family interview which can take place at a clinic health fair or the family's home during the interview.

Be sure to use therapeutic communication techniques such as using verbal and nonverbal cues to indicate your interest in what they're saying.

You can also help them feel at ease by spending some time on informal conversation and including all family members in the conversation.

Then ask about the family structure by determining who's included in their family and how members are related. You can do this by creating an eco ma with the family during your interview, which will help visualize how the family lives and interacts with each other and the world around them start by drawing a circle for each family member and draw lines to other circles to show each member's relationship with their community.

These relationships can include extended family, close friends, workplaces, schools or religious organizations as well as recreational activities and connections with the healthcare system.

The lines can be adjusted to show the intensity and direction of these relationships and whether they are negative or positive.

If the map reveals weak or absent connections where important support systems are missing or if negative relationships are present, you can then work with the family to identify potential areas for intervention and support.

You can also assess family functioning by determining which tasks are carried out by each member roles they perform within the family and how well the family functions together.

As a unit note, if there are health issues, keeping the family from being able to function, well, also identify the presence of stressors that can be preventing them from reaching their health goals such as caregiving duties, financial barriers or health education deficits.

Ok. Once you've completed the family assessment, work with the family to achieve positive health outcomes by creating a plan to build on the family's strengths and support family functioning.

Because the needs of families are typically complex. You'll work with the family to design targeted interventions to optimize their capacity for self care.

You'll also provide education on available resources within their community and make referrals as needed to initiate services for additional support.

For example, you may need to assist a family to manage developmental transitions involved in childbearing and parenting.

A first child loss of a job retirement or death of a family member. Or you may collaborate with other members of the healthcare team to provide early childhood interventions for a family with a child who has a developmental disability.

Finally, be sure to follow up with the family at a later date to evaluate how effectively their needs have been met and adjust the plan accordingly.

All right, as a quick recap, a family assessment is a method of collecting and organizing information about a family structure and function as a nurse, you'll perform family assessments and initiate interventions to promote positive health outcomes and support the family's well being.