The family is essential for promoting health. Nurses are well placed to advance family health care. Nursing work and assessment of family health needs is multi-dimensional and complex. Limited work exists in this area of practice. This book examines community nurses’ assessment practice from a theoretical and family-focused perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the process. The integration of symbolic interactionist and family systems perspectives grounded within a constructionist methodology allowed a fusion of these theoretical orientations. This was achieved by comparative multi-case study design. All four cases included a community nurse and a family. Comparing cases extended the exploratory design and added explanatory power by using Stake’s concept of “quintain” and by developing a novel analytical framework. Abductive inferential reasoning is rarely discussed in constructionist methodology, case study design or nursing research and can be useful to researchers across disciplines. Understanding the co-constructed meanings of family health assessment in primary care should be relevant globally to nurses involved in promoting family health care nursing.

Book Details:

ISBN-13:

978-3-639-51054-6

ISBN-10:

3639510542

EAN:

9783639510546

Book language:

English

By (author) :

Dorothee Johanna Helene O'Sullivan Burchard

Number of pages:

604

Published on:

2013-05-03

Category:

Care