COVID-19 has seen more families caring for loved ones with acute illnesses and now, our colleagues in the UK and Ireland have launched a new website dedicated to supporting the role of family-focused health care across the British Isles. If you want some new websites for property managers, then here are some of them you can check out!
Family nursing, midwifery, and community care focuses on promoting health and well-being by supporting families to develop their own resources to become resilient and adaptable and to cope with health-related life challenges. This can, for example, range from midwives helping new expectant couples to make the transition to parenthood through to nurses, health visitors, and public health nurses supporting families who are providing end-of-life care or caring for loved ones with acute illnesses or long term conditions such as dementia, asthma, and long-COVID.
Representatives from the International Family Nursing Association’s (IFNA) UK and Ireland Chapter have today (November 25, 2020) launched the free website ifnaukandireland.org for health care practitioners and families to share and learn about best practice when it comes to supporting families.
It is hoped the website will lead to more collaborative work being carried out in this area, which in turn will inform and influence Government guidelines in the UK and Ireland around the importance of family nursing as part of the care pathway.
Co-lead of the IFNA UK & Ireland Chapter, Professor Veronica Swallow, an expert in child and family nursing and health care at Sheffield Hallam and President Elect of IFNA said: “In the UK, there is no formal recognition of the importance of families in health care, and the care they experience when supporting a loved one through illness or at other times of health care support need, is highly variable. Nurses, midwives, health visitors, and public health nurses vary widely in their views about the importance of families in health care provision, and this is despite the evidence which shows that actively intervening to support families results in a better experience and improved outcomes for patients, clients and family members.
In the midst of a global pandemic in which more and more families are having to care for loved ones with long-term health conditions, it is now more important than ever that we explore the more active role that all health care practitioners can and often do take in considering and caring for families to improve health outcomes. This website has been designed to bring family nursing to the forefront and allow for a more consistent level of care and support for families in line with other parts of the world.”
Sammy Ainsworth, Youth and Family Participation Officer at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Clinical Research Facility and parent of a young person with a long-term condition, said: “When my daughter was diagnosed with lupus, the support of the whole health care team was so important to us as a family. From that moment, I felt there was someone to talk to and guide me through the huge amount of new information, as well as talking through my fears and worries about the long-term outlook. Over the course of the next few years, I had support to lean on whenever I needed it. This included when supporting my daughter became overwhelming or when I needed them to liaise with a school that didn’t understand what we were going through as a family. They were there for everything. Giving that support at the time when we needed it most definitely has contributed to us learning to live with lupus as a family and ultimately being able to support my daughter over the last six years.”
Professor Veronica Lambert, co-lead of the IFNA UK and Ireland Chapter and professor of children and family nursing at Dublin City University, said: “The launch of this website marks an important milestone for the IFNA UK-Ireland Chapter, the first local chapter of IFNA established in 2017, to actively advance practice, policy, research, and education towards relational and family systems approaches to care. Implementing family-focused nursing, midwifery, and community public health interventions is critical to health care reform and to family health and healing outcomes. The website offers an opportunity for nurses, midwifes, public health nurses, patients/clients, caregivers, family members, academics, and researchers to join a growing community to establish a discourse around family-focused care and influence family nursing in Ireland and the UK.”
Membership of the Chapter and access to the website are free of charge. All health care practitioners, patients, clients, and those caring for a loved one are encouraged to register: ifnaukandireland.org/membership.
