Family Concept of Nursing - Essay Example

Even today, a large number of sick people choose to recuperate from their illnesses at home. It is only when they develop severe symptoms that they feel compelled to visit hospitals. According to Berbiglia (2011), only 5% of all elderly people are permanent members of institutions. Families are also in the best position to nurse their sick. This is because most people live with at least one family member. This means that family members are in the best position to provide care since there is no cost involved. Families readily accept responsibility for realizing the self-care of different family members who may fall ill (Casida, Peters, and Magnan, 2009). Governmental as well as non-governmental organizations also realize the significance of families in dispensing healthcare services as they often invest resources in them that allow for the family members to be able to conduct self-care responsibilities.

A family in any community is responsible for supplying its members with certain resources that are necessary for healthy living such as security, clothing, food, shelter, and the right to medical care. Additionally, family-centered health care is based on the notion that the family is the sick person’s main source of support as well as strength. The family’s perspectives as well as knowledge on how to deal with issues surrounding the caretaking functions that are adopted when taking care of the sick are two important subjects that many medical practitioners always take into consideration when engaged in clinical decision-making.

Nurses can utilize family strengths as a basic system to encourage the formation of healthy and strong relationships between family caretakers and patients. Some of the strong family-related attributes include appreciation and affection, communication, strong spiritual counseling and support, and psychological support when dealing with mental or physical illnesses. With these types of family strengths, nurses can assist a family’s members to identify their hopes and visions for the future and concentrate on them instead of pondering over the issues that likely led to family problems (Casida, Peters, and Magnan, 2009). Orem’s theory of self-care is a theory that addresses the different types of care that can be provided for a sick person by his or her family.

Three systems are found in the Orem theory: the compensatory structure, in which the nurse is completely in charge of all the care activities associated with the patient, the partial compensatory model, where the patient can be responsible for self-administering some care options, and the educative-development model, in which the whole responsibility of overseeing care options falls on the patient and the nurse merely acts in the capacity of a consultant. In Orem's theory of nursing, the family is conceptualized from three perspectives:
- as a dynamic that conditions a person's need for care and capacity to provide care for him or herself;
- as a dependent unit of care;
- as a service unit. In this theory, nurses recognize that the deficits of their patients are likely to affect family members and, on the other hand, that family members have a very significant role in the formation as well as resolution of these discrepancies.

According to Taylor (2011), previous nursing research has confirmed the fact that Orem's model is successful in directing nursing interventions as well as family contributions to care that is provided for patients. The self-care addressed by the Orem model is something that can only be learned within the family. The family is the first unit that supports the self-development of all individuals. It is the family that teaches people to be self-dependent and look after themselves to survive. Human beings learn how to sustain relationships with others and function within society from the attachments that they develop within a family. The Orem self-care model is grounded on the fact that the well-being of human beings is upheld through self-care activities.

The objective of using Orem’s model in nursing practice is that it helps patients as well as families to participate in the processes of therapeutic independent practices of nursing while also inspiring the patients towards taking more control of actions that will improve their health care. This theory also supports the notion of family members helping the sick among them who may be mentally or physically incapable of caring for themselves. In Orem’s model, the focus is on emphasizing aspects of family-centered nursing. The use of this nursing model is likely to result in stronger relationships between various family members as well as between the family and community. When a patient opts for the Orem model, his or her family is also able to be able to better understand the different treatment methods incorporated in the treatment and so can readily anticipate any positive or negative changes and seek to encourage their emergence or curb them.