Though there are many concepts of family that can be applied to family nursing practices, the Acute Care Hospital as a part of the Veterans Affairs system cannot include all family concepts. However, most concepts can be considered applicable to the Acute Care Hospital for Veterans Affairs system aimed at rehabilitation and treatment of veterans who defend the honor of their country. In this respect, children and husbands/wives can find themselves near the patients to support them.
However, it happens that acute care hospital is deprived of opportunity to provide family nursing help aimed at treating the patient with regard to the situation with other family members. Nevertheless, it happens that family members influence greatly the health condition of a veteran. As reported by Orem et al. (2003), patients should be treated in accordance with their needs for daily self-care, necessity of meeting with family members and friends with regard to certain economic or spiritual difficulties (p. 9).
Congregate housing and home sharing are opportunities for elderly people in hospitals mentioned by Meiner (2005, p. 184). However, the acute care hospitals have difficulties with analyzing the family situations when veterans need acute help. For instance, it is problematic to assess the economic and spiritual conditions in the family if the patient was brought to the hospital by an ambulance and no other family members were with him at that moment. In this respect, the main problem is that acute care hospital for veterans provides a limited number of health care services and has no access to the information about the patient.
The period of treatment can bring some changes into this situation when family members and friends visit the patient. So, the nursing staff can analyze and evaluate the family relations of the patient and certain factors that can be influential for his/her health. For example, if the economic conditions of the family are worse than expected and the home environment is inappropriate for the extensive course of rehabilitation, the nursing staff should consider this component of the family nursing practice.
There are different theories in the field of family nursing. For instance, “Neuman’s model recognizes the definitions of the following four concepts that are commonly used in nursing practice: client, environment, health, and nursing (Sitzman and Eichelberger, 2010, p. 79). This model enables the nursing staff of the hospital to address the needs and illnesses of the patient with regard to other factors mentioned in this model. Nightingale’s environmental model suggests that “Examining environmental aspects, such as light, noise, or warmth can provide new insights into human responses to health and illness (Basavanthappa, 2007, p. 48).
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At the same time, it is necessary to think about self-care and ability of the patient to take care of himself/herself at hospital and after being discharged from hospital. Thus, it is also possible to introduce the Orem’s self-care model into nursing practice (Butts and Rich, 2010, p. 614). As soon as the nursing staff can find the most reasonable balance and apply the most appropriate practices to patient care, the health care system may benefit from introduction of family nursing into all specialties of nursing.
The theory applicable to the acute care hospital for Veterans Affairs can adapt such strategies as those presented in the Neuman’s system model, Orem’s self-care model, and Nightingale’s environmental model that presupposes the analysis of environment to create the most appropriate conditions for the patient. However, the model suggested by Orem can be ineffective right at the beginning because the patients are brought to the acute care hospital because they are not able to take medicines and other means of medication prescribed by the physician.
In other words, the situation in the acute care hospital differs from other departments in terms of the character of trauma and illness and the way patients should be treated. Nevertheless, the environmental theory applied by Florence Nightingale can be considered conductive to the acute care hospital setting because it is important to take into account the conditions in which the patient finds himself/herself after being brought into the hospital and in the rehabilitation period.
The concept of family is a broad issue that needs conside
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