Child and Family Practice: Nursing Care of the Family Report

This report focuses on child and family practice, specifically addressing nursing care for families facing challenges related to parenting transitions and preterm birth complications. The report analyzes a case study involving a family dealing with a toddler's tantrums and a newborn, highlighting the mother's exhaustion and need for support. It emphasizes the importance of nursing interventions such as providing education on successful parenting practices, recognizing child development patterns, and teaching coping mechanisms. The report also addresses the challenges of a preterm birth baby, including monitoring growth, providing parental education on care, and implementing interventions to support the infant's development. Nursing goals include supporting parents, implementing problem-solving interventions, and evaluating the effectiveness of care through observing the family's application of acquired knowledge and the child's health outcomes. The report references several studies to support the nursing interventions and provides a framework for comprehensive family-centered care, emphasizing the importance of early intervention and parental support in promoting the health and well-being of both the child and the family.

Running head: CHILD AND FAMILY PRACTICE
Child and family practice
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Part 2- Nursing care of the family: Planning, implementing and evaluating
1. Challenge/issue in the family-
a. Describe the issue:
The main challenge or issue facing Sheila is the transition to parenting and handling tantrums
of her children. She has an older daughter Jessie of 2 years old and new born son Grant of 4
years old. For Sheila, handling Jessie has been difficult as she is not yet toilet-trained, does not
sleeps much and eats very less too. Her tantrums are also too hard for Sheila to handle as she has
to attend to her new born baby, Grant too. Getting from her husband while caring for husband
also makes her worried and exhausted. Hence, the issues related to challenges in transition to
parenting are a common thing for most parents. The evidence by Hutteman et al., (2014) reveals
that parenting often involves a hectic schedule for parents, which makes it challenging for them.
Because of the need to constantly address their child’s need, they often find less time for
themselves. Secondly, adjusting to the new role of parenting becomes difficult because there is a
dramatic change in lifestyle after the birth of bath. Imbalanced life and inability to understand
certain behavior patterns of children make parents feel exhausted and emotionally drained
(Roeters, Mandemakers, & Voorpostel, 2016).
b. Plan nursing care:
In relation to the challenges faced by Sheila after acquiring the new parenting roles and
handling the tantrums of their children, the main nursing goals is to:
 Support Sheila in identifying the needs of her children and handling their tantrums
 Providing parenting knowledge and practices to Sheila so that she can manage both
personal and situation adversities during parenthood

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 Implement specific problem-solving interventions to manage behavioral problems in
Jessie
 Support Sheila to achieve parenthood goals as well as find time for her own personal
interest
The above mentioned goals is relevant to the problem of challenges in parenting. Specific
nursing intervention related to supporting Sheila during parenthood would help her handle
pressures as well as address social isolation in her. The above is in relevance of the policies too
which emphasizes on supporting parents of children below 8 years. These kinds of interventions
mainly focus on supporting parents of young children by providing knowledge about children
development and successful parenting practices. On the whole, the nursing interventions would
help to strengthen the parenting capacity of parents like Sheila.
c. Implement nursing care:
To achieve the above goal and help Sheila address all her worries related to parenting, the
main nursing intervention is providing education on successful parenting practices and
recognizing child development patterns and needs at different age. Major challenges for parents
arise when they do not understand the reason why their child is crying so much or why they are
not eating properly. Hence, the nurse supports parents to understand the behavior patterns of
children and address them accordingly. Early care education mostly facilitates parents to
understand the health, learning and development of their children. To meet the diverse needs of
family, the nurse may teach her several coping mechanism to handle issues in parenting.
Directing parents to home and community service for children with specialized care also
encourages successful parenting practice (Breitenstein, Gross, & Christophersen, 2014). The

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nursing goal of supporting parents with young children is also recommended by pediatric nursing
services, as it is part of the family centered care philosophy (Harrison, 2010). Such nursing
intervention promotes emotional and psychological development of family as a whole too.
The nurse can also teach Sheila how to toilet train Jessie by the following steps-
 Teaching Sheila to identify whether her child is toilet ready or not
 The child can be taught about giving signs when she need to go to the toilet
 The parents can also detect toileting needs in her child with the movement and behavior
pattern
 Secondly, education related to teaching children how to use toilet should also be given
 Effective toileting training will make the child develop a routine and prevent soiling
clothes.
d. Evaluate nursing care:
The above mentioned nursing care of supporting Sheila through education and knowledge on
successful parenting practice can be evaluated by seeing whether Sheila has affected acquired all
the knowledge in her daily life. If she is recognizing the signs and symptoms related to toileting
needs or reasons for crying, then it can be said that the planned goal of care has been made. This
will eventually help to address social isolation of Sheila too and she feels confident that she can
manage her child’s need very well now. This will help to maintain emotional as well as physical
health of Jessie as well as overall family too
2. Challenge/issue in the family:
Describe the issue:

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Another issue found in Jenson family is that her 4 weeks old son, Grant is not developing
properly and many abnormalities have been found in him due to pre-term birth. Secondly, little
support from her husband, Scott has particularly made things difficult for Sheila. This issue is
relevant to co-parenting challenges during parenthood and poor physical development in pre-
term birth children. Riina & McHale, (2014) has showed that different dimensions of
coparenting affect the development of children and management of their risky behavior. Hence,
support from Scott would have helped Sheila to easily care for her child. Soares et al., (2016)
also that proper care of children with preterm birth is important because they are at greater risk
of developing short and long-term health complications. Hence, unless action is taken at the right
time, the parents are mostly likely to be exposed to physical, emotional and financial challenges.
Plan nursing care:
One of the major family issues of Jenson family is the complications seen in their pre-term
baby, Grant. Although Grant is breast fed, however he cries all the time and does not sleeps
much. He was also on neonatal intensive care unit on CPAP for 24 hours and special care
nursery for two weeks. Hence, to prevent health related complications in Grant, the goal of
nursing care are to
 To monitor development and health of Grant regularly
 Monitoring and responding to abnormal weight, length and head circumference
measurement of grant
 Teaching and providing education to Sheila about care for her children with pre-term
birth

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 Teaching coping and management skills to Scott to engage in successful co-parenting
activities (Lunsky et al., 2015)
The above mentioned goals are relevant to the inappropriate development and growth issues
in preterm birth children as evidence have shown that such children growth with of many
diseases throughout their lives. The earlier is the pre-term birth, the earlier is the risk of medical
complications in later life. Apart from chronic health issues, it may also lead to learning and
motor disabilities for children (Ranke, Krägeloh‐Mann, & Vollmer, 2015). Hence, tracking the
growth and progress of Grant will be important for her growth and development.
Implement nursing care:
The key nursing care relevant to the family issue is management of care and well-being of
Grant. The nursing intervention for care of pre-term birth baby can be done by routine
assessment and evaluation of growth and development in Grant. As part of assessment regarding
Grant’s progress, it has been found that his weight, length and head circumference is tracking
along 10th percentile line. This indicates that overall growth and development of Grant is not
normal like other child and the measurement indicates that out of 100 children, only 10 children
will have such head, weight and length measurements. In response to such measurement, the
nurse needs to evaluate the reasons for such measurements and any possibilities of abnormal
growth development. Evidence has shown that there is rise in focus on growth, metabolic status
and neurocognitive development of pre-term birth children so that atypical development can be
detected early and nurses can take preventive measures at the right time to improve outcomes
(Ranke, Krägeloh‐Mann, & Vollmer, 2015).

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Secondly, in response to nursing intervention for addressing the special needs of pre-term
birth child, the main nursing action is to provide adequate knowledge to parents about
abnormalities and teaching them coping skills to handle such child. Supportive nursing care is
critical to the adequate management preterm infant (Benzies et al., 2013). Firstly, education for
parents is needed in the area of nutritional supplementations required for such baby and engaging
in neuro-developmental care for such infants. As Sheila is unaware about immunization needs of
her baby, the nurse needs to guide regarding the same and direct her to adequate health care
services to fulfill the immunizations needs too. Such children may also develop thermoregulation
stability, so the nurse needs to provide appropriate environment and clothing to the child too
(Lester et al., 2014).
Evaluate nursing care:
In relation to the nursing intervention for management of care for pre-term birth baby, the
success of the outcome is dependent on good physical and neuro-cognitive outcome of patients.
When Sheila is aware about the care needs and complications in such pre-term birth baby, she
can take the actions at the right time. This will help the child to get adequate treatment and
nursing care and facilitate optimal health and well-being too.

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Reference
Benzies, K. M., Magill-Evans, J. E., Hayden, K. A., & Ballantyne, M. (2013). Key components
of early intervention programs for preterm infants and their parents: a systematic review
and meta-analysis. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 13(1), S10.
Breitenstein, S. M., Gross, D., & Christophersen, R. (2014). Digital delivery methods of
parenting training interventions: a systematic review. Worldviews on Evidence
‐Based
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Harrison, T. M. (2010). Family-centered pediatric nursing care: state of the science. Journal of
pediatric nursing, 25(5), 335-343.
Hutteman, R., Bleidorn, W., Keresteš, G., Brković, I., Butković, A., & Denissen, J. J. (2014).
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Lester, B. M., Hawes, K., Abar, B., Sullivan, M., Miller, R., Bigsby, R., ... & Padbury, J. F.
(2014). Single-family room care and neurobehavioral and medical outcomes in preterm
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Lunsky, Y., Robinson, S., Reid, M., & Palucka, A. (2015). Development of a mindfulness-based
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disabilities. Mindfulness, 6(6), 1335-1344.

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Ranke, M. B., Krägeloh‐Mann, I., & Vollmer, B. (2015). Growth, head growth, and
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Soares, R. L. D. S. F., Christoffel, M. M., Rodrigues, E. D. C., Machado, M. E. D., & Cunha, A.
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