University Health Promotion Assignment: Gordon's Patterns & Ethics

This report addresses key aspects of health promotion and ethical considerations in nursing, as outlined in the Nursing 561 assignment brief. It begins by explaining Gordon's Functional Health Patterns as a comprehensive method for assessing individual health, detailing how nurses utilize this framework to evaluate various health domains through patient interactions and medical reports. The report then delves into the family characteristics that can contribute to dysfunctional health patterns, such as conflict, financial instability, and unhealthy habits, and their impact on individual well-being. A significant portion of the report is dedicated to discussing the ethical and legal complexities surrounding a patient's right to know a caregiver's health status, particularly in the context of HIV/AIDS. The analysis explores the balance between patient safety, caregiver privacy, and the potential for disclosure, using a hypothetical case involving a physician with HIV to illustrate the ethical dilemmas and legal issues involved. The report references supporting literature to substantiate its claims.

Running head: HEATH PROMOTION
HEATH PROMOTION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Gordon’s Functional Health patterns:
Gordon’s Functional Health patterns are a method that is used by the nurses to provide a
more comprehensive nursing assessment of the patient (Baynav.bopdhb.govt.nz, 2019). The
areas which are accessed through Gordon’s health patterns by interactions with the patients and
by viewing their medical reports to give an outline of the wellness condition of the patient
includes:
 Their perception and management of health
 Nutrition dietary monitoring
 Elimination-excretion patterns and an evaluation needs to be made against any issue they
are facing such as diarrhea, constipation or any other bowel disorder
 Activity or exercise (whether they are able to do their daily activities without any trouble
or issue)
 Whether they have insomnia, hyper insomnia or have normal patterns of sleep.
 A cognitive perceptual assessment is done by checking the person’s ability to
comprehend including self-perception and self-realization
 Role and relationships
 Whether they are sexually active and productive
 Their coping stress tolerance
 Value belief pattern.
The basic health information are accessed in order to get a clear understanding of the
patient’s health status and comment on the current health issues they are facing. It is the primary
responsibility of all the health care providers to access the health information and draw a
conclusion out of it in relation to the current symptoms the patients are showing supported or

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backed up by medical reports. All healthcare providers must have the ability to understand and
comprehend the health complications the patients are facing by analyzing their past medical
history and by accessing current reports of the patients. By applying Gordon’s functional health
patterns, health interventions are more likable to provide an improved health outcome and
promote the overall health of the patients (Jones, 2012).
The family characteristics that may contribute to potential or actual
dysfunctional health patterns are:
 Conflict, misbehavior and negligence in a family can lead to emotional distress and
psychological misbalances impacting the overall health of an individual. The family
members are in a tremendous emotional disturbance in a dysfunctional family that
eventually affects their wellbeing and declines their overall health condition.
 If a family is in financial crisis it can lead to more dysfunctional behavior within the
family members. It also affects the emotional wellbeing of the family members and
impacts the overall health of an individual. Due to insufficient monetary resources,
people are often unable to go for a health check-up and medical tests that eventually
complicate the health issues they have.
 Healthy habit: Families should be involved in healthy food habits and avoid fast food and
anything that has a negative impact on health. If a family has an unhealthy food habit it
can cause serious health damage. Problematic and unfriendly family relationships have a
adverse wellness effect.
 There are evidences showing the role of poor-quality relationships in harming physical
and mental health. Growing up in an unbearable, negligent or abusive family
is associated with poor physical health and growth (Walker & Crocker, 2017).

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Patient’s right to know the heath status of the caregiver:
Patients have no general obligation to privacy, not because the patients have no rights to
safeguard themselves from unnecessary hazards, but because, due to their distant danger, HIV
disease in healthcare usually does not apply to the disclosable threat realm. In addition, patients
do not usually have the obligation to assess all risks in healthcare. Even if patients are worried
about the HIV infection of their healthcare professionals, the risk of HIV infection can be
avoided through measures other than disclosure from those practitioners. In the case of a patient
who wants to know about the diagnosis of HIV / AIDS in a health worker is usually not
have sufficient moral strength to justify unintentional disclosure when the interest of a health
worker to keep such information private is weighed against. Medical professionals and other
health workers may provide patients with information on a personal diagnosis of HIV / AIDS for
reasons of their own choice. Some health workers may wish to and have actually reveals the data
when they feel it would enhance the value of their relationship with clients to confirm their
diagnosis of HIV / AIDS. Maybe rejecting the right of a patient to know for having a harmful
effect on workers leaves behind the sense that only their privacy matters. There is perhaps the
feeling that rejecting the right to request disclosure does not respond to patient protection needs.
However, these statements do not imply that patients are at risk in the treatment process. On the
contrary, appropriate moral grounds are already acknowledged for norms of patient safety,
despite not having widely followed certain practices with regard to risk of HIV. The same moral
(and legal) rewards which direct risk transparency in medical treatments and tests, but not
without limit, extend to fear discovery of probable HIV infection in health care (Madiba &
Mokwena, 2012).

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References:
B, O. (2019). Should caregivers be compelled to disclose patients' HIV infection to the patients'
sex partners without consent? - PubMed - NCBI.
Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Baynav.bopdhb.govt.nz. (2019). [online] Available at:
https://baynav.bopdhb.govt.nz/media/1349/gordons-
functional-health-patterns.pdf [Accessed 17 Jul. 2019].
Jones, D., Duffy, M. E., Flanagan, J., & Foster, F. (2012). Psychometric evaluation of the
functional health pattern assessment screening tool
(FHPAST). International journal of nursing knowledge,
23(3), 140-145.
Madiba, S., & Mokwena, K. (2012). Caregivers' Barriers to Disclosing the HIV Diagnosis to
Infected Children on Antiretroviral Therapy in a Resource-
Limited District in South Africa: A Grounded Theory
Study. AIDS Research And Treatment, 2012, 1-10. doi:
10.1155/2012/402403
Staccini, L., Tomba, E., Grandi, S., & Keitner, G. I. (2015). The evaluation of family functioning
by the family assessment device: A systematic review of
studies in adult clinical populations. Family process, 54(1),
94-115.
Walker, D. K., & Crocker, R. W. (2017). Measuring family systems outcomes. In Evaluating
family programs (pp. 153-176). Routledge.