Working in a children’s hospital you learn to develop an understanding of family centered care and how this can be applied to practice.
Family centerd care (FCC) encourages and enables family members to be involved in the planning, delivery and evaluation of their child’s carefamily centered care. FCC identifies the primary care giver as the most important person in the child’s life and also the only constant factor the child can relate to during the chaotic time of hospitalization.
Ineffective FCC can result from a break down in communication and the inability for the health care professional to commit to the process due to the acuity of patients and heavy patient loads.
Additionally, the establishment of FCC can be hindered due to a resistance by health care professionals, including nurse, to relinquish control of the patient care and enable the empowerment of the family to become actively involved.
Effective FCC has been demonstrated to diminish hospital length of stay, reduce anxiety for the child and their family, decrease infection risk for the patient as their parent or carer can provide care and increase patient advocacy.
Where I work, we view family centered care as an essential aspect of quality paediactric nursing care and aim to facilitate FCC at all stages of the child’s journey through our hospital services. We identify the child’s family as those people who are significant in the child life.
How do you define a family? Do you have experiences or opinions about utilizing family centered care in your work place?
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