One of our main objectives as future nurses is to understand individual patients is to first gain an understanding of family background. Working with family from a systems perspective, the nurse is able to gain an understanding to the ways in which family members interact, what the family norms and expectations are, how effectively members communicate, who makes decisions, and how the family deals with needs and expectations (Edleman & Mandle, 2002). In the concept of systems theory, a family can exist within a community (suprasystem) and at the same time have smaller relationships within that family (subsystems). By composing a genogram, or family tree, one can see information on family relationships, health patterns, occupations, and religion. By composing an ecomap one can see information on how a family and its members interact with larger systems or smaller subsystems. The term family can be defined as "a group of individuals who are bound by strong emotional ties, a sense......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 1570
Approximate Pages: 7 (260 words per double-spaced page) |