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Nursing Autonomy and Responsibilities To Family Members

Nursing requires leadership skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and being a role model. Nurses must oversee patient care and ensure all staff fulfill their duties. The nurse coordinates care for patients and their families, protecting patients, teaching health matters, and advocating when needed. Nurses teach families how to provide basic care, using traditional and modern methods. Family members provide most care for the elderly and end-of-life patients, so nurses must train and support caregivers to safely meet patient needs through education, counseling, and assistance. Nurses teach patients and families about self-care, nutrition, hygiene and more to promote recovery and healthy living.

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97 views4 pages

Nursing Autonomy and Responsibilities To Family Members

Nursing requires leadership skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and being a role model. Nurses must oversee patient care and ensure all staff fulfill their duties. The nurse coordinates care for patients and their families, protecting patients, teaching health matters, and advocating when needed. Nurses teach families how to provide basic care, using traditional and modern methods. Family members provide most care for the elderly and end-of-life patients, so nurses must train and support caregivers to safely meet patient needs through education, counseling, and assistance. Nurses teach patients and families about self-care, nutrition, hygiene and more to promote recovery and healthy living.

Uploaded by

KoEy Are U
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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NURSING AUTONOMY AND

RESPONSIBILITIES TO FAMILY MEMBERS

NURSING AUTONOMY
Nurse is not a career that is suitable for everyone or for every nurse. Leadership positions
not only require additional sacrifices on your behalf but it also requires someone who is a critical
thinker, in other words, somebody who can work effectively under pressure and who is able to
resolve problems within the workplace quickly and efficiently and without conflict. Nurses who
assume leadership and management roles also need to be creative thinkers. Not only is their work
demanding of them, but they too have to oversee that everyone else is fulfilling their duties and
that patient care is of the best. Within a position of leadership, one should be a role model and a
positive influence on the nurses within the hospital as well as on the image of the hospital as a
whole.

The nurse coordinates the work of others involved in caring for the patient, including the
patient's family, who may do a lot of the care for the patient. The nurse also protects the patient,
working to prevent infection and ensure a safe, healthy environment in the hospital. Finally, the
nurse teaches the patient and family about health-related matters and promotes patients’ well-
being in all situations, speaking for them (advocating), if necessary. The hospital nurse plays
many roles on the health care team.

The family needs to learn how to give basic care from the nurse, who also helps them
where necessary. This includes learning how to use traditional ways of healing with modern
health care. The nurse supports the family in giving basic care to their sick loved one.

Responsibilities Family Members


The term family members is used loosely here to refer to individuals close to the patient
who provide care, emotional, physical, financial, or otherwise to the patient. It is well
documented that family members, primarily spouses and adult children, provide the bulk of care
to the frail elderly. A 1999 study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms that
they also provide the vast majority of assistance with nonmedical end-of-life care. The study
showed that in 96% of cases the primary caregivers for terminally ill patients were family
members.
All healthcare members are responsible for helping family caregivers to help the patient.
These informal service providers need training and education so that they can safely and
effectively meet the medical and personal care needs of patients at home. They need counseling
to help them cope with the demands of caregiving and with their own emotions and grief. They
need practical assistance in obtaining and managing all the medical and nonmedical services the
patient requires. At times they need an understanding look, a caring smile, and a shoulder to cry
on.

NURSING RESPONSIBITIES
Teach the patient and family is a major role of the nurse in restoring health, promoting
health and preventing illness. When a person is ill, the nurse demonstrates things the patient can
do to help with recovery. Whenever the nurse works with a patient, the nurse uses the
opportunity to teach that person about self-care. Nurses teach both patients and their families
about proper diet and nutrition, cleanliness and hygiene, exercise, sleep and rest and all the other
aspects of a healthy life.
Before the patient leaves the hospital, the nurse teaches the patient and family about care
at home. For example, nurses teach family members how to bathe the person or wash his or her
hair in bed, and how to feed the person or change dressings. Nurses teach people how to
minimize the effects of disability so that they will have the best quality of life.
In this situation, nurse can teach and deliver knowledge to the family members by few
way; example;

1. Caregiver/ Care provider – the traditional and most essential role


 functions as nurturer, comforter, provider
 “mothering actions” of the nurse
 provides direct care and promotes comfort
 activities involves knowledge and sensitivity to what matters and what is important to
patient
 shows concern for patient welfare and acceptance of the client as a person

2. Teacher – provides information and helps the client/family members to learn or acquire new
knowledge and technical skills
 encourages compliance with prescribed therapy.
 promotes healthy lifestyle
 interprets information to the client
3. Counselor- helps client to recognize and cope with stressful psychologic or social problems; to
develop an improve interpersonal relationships and to promote personal growth.
 provides emotional, intellectual to and psychologic support
 focuses on helping a client to develop new attitudes, feelings and behaviors rather than
promoting intellectual growth.

4. Client advocate- involves concern for and actions in behalf of the client to bring about a
change.
 promotes what is best for the client, ensuring that the client’s needs are met and
protecting the client’s right.
 provides explanation in clients language and support clients decisions.

Nurses have the legal responsibility to explain all treatment, medications and lab results to
patients or authorized family members of patients. Before a patient may undergo surgery, he or
she will need to sign a consent form. If the nurse is administering the treatment, such as
anesthesia, it is the nurse's legal obligation to explain the negatives and positives of the
anesthesia. The patient or family member must then sign a consent form acknowledging that the
patient understands the procedure. If this form is not signed and complications occur, the nurse
may face legal consequences.

The Role of the Registered Nurse in Family Care

The goal of public health nursing is to promote health and prevent decline in specific
populations through the use of nursing, social, and public health knowledge (ANA, 2007, pg. 5).
Family Care nursing can also be thought of as a branch of home health or community health
nursing that focuses on providing quality health care where a patient resides, whether a private
home or an assisted living or personal care facility (ANA, Scope and Practice of Home Health
Nursing, 2007)

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