The stated mission of IFNA is “to transform family health by:
- Serving as a unifying force and voice for family nursing globally;
- Sharing knowledge, practices, and skills to enhance and nurture family nursing practice; and,
- Providing family nursing leadership through education, research, scholarship, socialization and collegial exchange on all aspects of family nursing
The IFNA Position Statements on family nursing education and practice have been a valuable means of providing leadership and carrying out this mission. As well, several IFNA members have been reaching out to local health services to inform them about IFNA and family nursing in general. Three examples of these are Junko Honda in Japan, Maria do Ceu Barbieri-Figuerido in Portugal, and Wilma Schroeder in Canada.
Wilma Schroeder recently had occasion to meet with the Program Manager of the Critical Care Program in her home city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. This program has always valued families and in recent years has been actively working to engage families. Their “Cherry Blossom” strategy for promoting respectful environments for families at end-of-life has been widely adopted in ICUs and other nursing areas across the region, and they were delighted to share it with the global family nursing community. Please see the attachment to learn about this strategy, and how they are engaging families in critical care. As a result of this conversation, new connections have been forged and opportunities for family nursing education, socialization, and practice have been enhanced.
These connections are the seeds of transformation, through which IFNA members are influencing health care systems to make family nursing the rule rather than the exception.
Joel G. Anderson, PhD, CHTP, is an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee College of Nursing and a member of the IFNA Communications Committee. His research focuses on support of family caregivers and persons with dementia. He uses social media as one way of examining the family caregiving experience. You can follow him on Twitter at @JoelAndersonPhD or read his blog.
