A family is the basic unit of society comprising of two or more people who are interdependent in how they interact among themselves and with the communities around them. The family plays an essential role developing individual identity and self worth of the family members, which in turn shapes the entire community. This is by providing the necessary environment for the family members to grow physically and in character. The family develops and protects them from challenges that they may face from the environment and society through providing for their needs and solving their problems.
The family is also responsible for development of personal identity and self-worth through identification with a family and values the family believes in and practices. Family members acquire health values through the family set up and the various transitions in structure that a family undergoes. These include nutrition and hygiene and what to avoid such as drug abuse, which they inculcate in their culture and believes and transmit them to the other family members and genealogies that follow. Therefore, the family unit educates the family members on what illness is and how it should be treated to improve the quality of life in the community (Edwards, Courtney, Finlayson, Shuter, & Lindsay, 2009).
There is a need to identify the healthy situation in a community to identify the existing health problems and solutions. To achieve this, there is use of the conceptual framework for family assessment, which is a method of collecting, organizing, and interpreting the information regarding a family health situation. The assessment can be done by applying the self-efficacy model, which has five processes. The first step is identifying the health concerns and needs of the family followed by setting up of the goals that are acceptable to both the family and the evaluator. Defining and clearly identifying all the available alternatives comes next before the process implementation. The final move is the evaluation of the assessment to find out the applicability and actualization of the assessment (Edwards et al., 2009).
There are various community based services used in the promotion of family health. One of the ways is by using preventive measures to prevent the society from facing the problems. This focuses on the groups at risk of suffering such tragedies such as risk of pre-term births and premature deaths in children. In addition, there are control measures to deal with a health problem that has already occurred to prevent further spread or reduce the effects. There are many such cases in the community today, such as immunizations and prenatal care campaigns especially to the poor and the marginalized to ensure such problems do not occur (McDonald, Langford, & Boldero, 2010).
Adequate nursing skills and strategies promotes positive family interventions effectively. This will ensure offering of relationship focused care with proper timing of when to intervene and the level of intervention. The first necessary skill is communication skills. One must be capable of getting information as well as deliver it in a way that is acceptable by the community that needs intervention. Equally important is listening skills. Proper communication is not possible without proper listening skills, which helps facilitate understanding of the problem at hand, and getting feedback when intervention is in progress. There is also a requirement for problem solving skills and strategy formulation. Families will be facing various problems, and it is essential to have problem solving skills to ensure clear identification of the problems and solutions to deal with them within the right time. Interpersonal relationships help connect with the society in implementing the program, evaluate the results, and are key in promoting family health interventions (McDonald et al., 2010).
In conclusion, the family is the basic component of the society and plays an important role in shaping the character of family members and protecting them. This helps develop the personal identity and self worth and values of each person. Therefore, community nurses should ensure protection of the family by establishing the health situation of a community and then rectifying any problems in the community. This is though community based services by professionals with adequate nursing skills and strategies, which guarantee positive family interventions. Through this care, the family, as well as the whole community lives a good comfortable life.
References
Edwards, H., Courtney, M., Finlayson, K., Shuter, P., & Lindsay, E. (2009). A randomised controlled trial of a community nursing intervention: improved quality of life and healing for clients with chronic leg ulcers. Journal of clinical nursing, 18(11), 1541-1549.
McDonald, A. L., Langford, I. H., & Boldero, N. (2010). The future of community nursing in the United Kingdom: district nursing, health visiting and school nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 26(2), 257-265.