Nursing as a vital component of health delivery system

Part Nursing is one of the most vital components of health delivery system. It provides the essential ingredient of health and medical area that facilitates faster recovery. Nurses, through personal care, compassion and positive attitude, provide the patients and their families with an inner strength to cope with the illnesses and ensure that their health related needs are taken care of with efficiency. The appropriate nursing approaches become highly relevant for patients like dementia, autism, dyslexia etc. who have no visible sign of disability and need to be integrated into the mainstream population.
I think that strength based approach of nursing is much better than deficient approach because it has optimistic outlook towards the sickness. It uses positive features of the patient and carer to help them to cope with the situation through improved understanding and acceptance so that they willingly use tools that facilitate better care or use tools for self help, as the case may be. Freely and Gottlieb have asserted that in a strength based approach, the nurse-client relationship is a ‘ partnership’ that ensures and ‘ honour(s) basic human rights in health care relationships’ (Freely and Gottlieb, 2000).
The most interesting fact is that the approach empowers patients and carer to seek ways and means for recovery. The approach is conducive for developing mutual trust and feeling of self worth which helps them to integrate with the mainstream population. The understanding and acceptance of the situation helps to create an understanding for the requisite physical and emotional support. The nursing guidelines also assert that ‘ building a nurse-family partnership is central to strengthening and supporting families (Skemp Kelley et al., 2000; Ward-Griffin & McKeever, 2000 from RNAO). The emotional and moral support of the family goes a long way to inculcate confidence within the person. (297)
Part 2
The student’s post has linked community health care with the family care which is very pertinent to the overall well-being of the patient. Community health promotes the concept of ‘ prevention is better than care’ and through resources and strengths, the empowered community members maintain good health. In the same way, he has affirmed the importance of strength based approach in clinical care primarily because it also empowers the family members, carer and the patient with information that is critical to the wider understanding of the disease and apprehensions of the patients and family members alike.
The student has talked about ‘ effect change’ which is very valid, especially with reference to the assumptions of the understanding which the family may have vis-à-vis diseases, tools and resources that could be applied as intervention and wider scope of family support. These are integral part of strength based approach that encourage them to understand the various issues involved in the caring and use informed choices to meet the challenges of the situation. The student has also touched upon the reflective practices employed in the approach and says that sharing of mutual experiences with the caring of the patients helps expand the horizon of clinical interventions and improve and improvise caring inputs. (207)
Reference
Feeley, N. & Gottlieb, L. N. (2000). Nursing approaches for working with family strengths and resources. Journal of Family Nursing, 6 (1), 9 – 24.
Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (2006). Nursing best practice guideline: Supporting and strengthening families through expected and unexpected life events. Available from: . [25 September 2009].