Family Focused Nursing Practice
Presented by Sharon A. Denham, DSN RN
Dr. Denham has had varied clinical nursing experiences early in her career, but has been a faculty member and taught nursing at Ohio University for about 25 years. Her nursing doctorate is from the University of Alabama at Birmingham from which she was recognized as one of their 60 Visionary Leaders in 2010. She is now a Professor Emeritus from Ohio University, but has recently accepted a new position at Texas Woman’s University in Dallas, Texas as the Houston J. & Florence A. Doswell Endowed Chair in Nursing for Teaching Excellence. She has long focused on family care, community health, and Appalachian culture. Funding from the CDC National Diabetes Education Program enabled her to work with prevention of type 2 diabetes and its complications in the Appalachian region and develop a program called Diabetes: A Family Matter www.diabetesfamily.net. She has many publications and given many regional, national, and international presentations from her research and scholarly work. Her text entitled Family Health: A Framework for Nursing provides an ecological lens to envision holistic nursing perspectives. She has served as lead editor for a new undergraduate textbook titled Family Focused Nursing Practice currently in production by FA Davis that will be available fall 2014.
Program / Event Description:
This webinar will focus on what it means to deliver individual care and still focus on the family unit’s needs. Topics to be covered include family focused communication, intentional nursing practice, continuity of care across multiple settings over time, and attention to family strengths and values when designing tailored nursing care. The session will describe ways to help students and practitioners embrace the value of understanding health and illness needs from a family unit and household context.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the session, participants should be able to:
- Identify ways to provide nursing care for individuals and ‘think family.’
- Design intentional reflective nursing practices to support relationship based and outcome focused care.
- Explain ways a family health lens can be used to drive health and illness care delivery across medical, community, and household settings.
