Family nursing in Great Britain and Ireland: British Branch and the First International Family Nursing Association

Author’s (on behalf of the UK and Ireland branch of IFNA): Professor Veronica Swallow @SwallowVeronica and Professor Veronica Lambert @VLambertDCU

Supporting individuals who need healthcare is a key priority for nurses and midwives within the UK and Ireland. Family-centered care interventions have the potential to enhance the health and well-being of people and families in times of need, including throughout the current Covid-19 pandemic¹.^{2 3 4 5 6} .

In 2017, the UK and Ireland Branch of the International Family Nursing Association (IFNA) was established by a gaggle of nurses and midwives who actively support and advocate for families throughout life, from the start to the tip of life. Because families are units made up of interdependent individuals, changes that occur in a single member of the family can impact other relations.^10/11 Nurses and midwives subsequently play a central role in supporting families and relations of their work. Collaborating with families, as patients desire, is critical to advancing health care reform and promoting family health and well-being. Great emphasis needs to be placed on considering the varied needs of the family and constructing its strengths. Continuing skilled development is required to support nurses in all health care settings, communities and society to adopt a partnership model of working with families and to grasp knowledge about family functioning and approaches to care in family systems.

With the growing variety of qualified and student nurses and midwives, and thru the varied activities of our departments, we’re maintaining the discourse on approaches to family nursing which can be relevant within the UK and Ireland. In November 2020, we launched our website IFNA within the UK and Ireland : :

• It brings together a set of resources that may help shape a positive approach to family nursing;
• Promotes and disseminates family nursing through regular newsletters, blogs, Twitter chats and webinars on family nursing;
• Makes evidence-based research, practice, education, and policy resources in family nursing available to a broad audience of relations, nurses, other health care professionals, and family researchers.

Working with nurses and families across the UK and Ireland to advertise our shared goals, the Chapter:

• Supports and promotes family-centred lifelong nursing within the UK and Ireland;
• Acts as a unifying force and voice for nursing, midwifery and medical visiting/public health nursing;
• It enables British and Irish nurses to acknowledge the family as a legitimate recipient of nursing care and to work in partnership with families;
• He learns from family nurses in other regions of the world.

Membership within the Chapter it’s free and we link closely with the broader ones International Family Nursing Association. We will probably be the hosts in June 2021 virtual fifteenth IFNA conference during which roughly 350 nurses and midwives from 36 countries will engage with interdisciplinary colleagues and families from all over the world to explore and discuss family nursing across the lifespan. Our conference will cover family nursing from the perinatal period through childhood and early maturity, through maturity into older maturity, and end-of-life and bereavement at any stage of life, and may even include technological advances. Bringing knowledge from international best practices, the conference will provide networking opportunities for early profession researchers, graduate nurses, PhD students and clinical nurses whose competencies include evidence-based practice. This will result in latest and strengthened existing national and international collaborations between families, researchers, educators and clinicians to advertise the potential and capabilities of family nurses as advocates for optimal family health and wellbeing across the lifespan within the UK and Ireland. You can register for IFNC15 here Registration for the IFNA conference

Bibliography

1. Smith, J., Ali, P., Birks, Y., Curtis, P., Fairbrother, H., Kirk, S., . . . Jaskółka, V. (2020). A “pass-through” review of family-centered care interventions supporting families who’ve a member of the family with a long-term illness. Journal of Advanced Nursing. doi:1111/January 14367
2. Jo, M., Song, M.K., Knafl, G.J., Beeber, L., Yoo, Y.S. and Van Riper, M., 2019. ICU GP communication and its association with relations’ psychological distress: A cross-sectional study . International journal of nursing studies, 95pp. 34-39..
3. Risling, T., Risling, D. and Holtslander, L., 2017. Creating a social media assessment tool for family nursing. Journal of Family Nursing, 23(1), pp. 13-33.
4. International Family Nursing Association. (2015). IFNA position statement on general competencies in family nursing practice. https://internationalfamilynursing.org/2015/07/31/ifna-position-statement-on-generalist-competency-forfamily-nursing-practice/
5. International Family Nursing Association. (2017). IFNA position statement on advanced practice competencies in family nursing. https://internationalfamilynursing.org/ 2017/05/19/advanced-practice-competency/
6. Lutik MLA aluminum, Family Health in Europe – Nursing Research (FAME-RN) Group. Guest Editorial Covid-19 Pandemic: A Family Affair Journal of Family Nursing, Volume 26, Issue 2, May 2020, Pages 87–89
7. Parkinson, M., Carr, S., Rushmer, R., and Abley, C. (2016). Exploring what works to support family carers of individuals with dementia: a fast realist review. Journal of Public Health39 section 4): e290–e301
8. Metcalfe,A.(2018). Sharing genetic risk information: Implications for family nurses across the lifespan. Journal of Family Nursing 24(1): 86-105.
9. Neill, S.J (2010). Containing acute childhood illness in family life: Substantive grounded theory. Journal of Child Health Care 14 section 4): 327-344.
10. Benson, A., O’Toole, S., Lambert, V., Gallagher, P., Shahwan, A., Austin, J. (2016) Experiences and perceptions of families living with epilepsy: Implications for epilepsy communication internally and externally family unit. Education and counseling for patients 99(9): 1473-81.
11. O’Toole, S., Gallagher, P., Benson, A., Shahwan, A., Austin, JK., Lambert, V. (2019) Exploring the connection between parent-child communication about epilepsy and psychosocial well-being. Journal of Health Psychology doi-org.dcu.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1359105319871642

(Visited 400 times, 1 visit today)