Christina West, RN, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba (Canada). She is currently leading the development of an undergraduate nursing course (fourth year) in family health. The course content will include a focus on Family Systems Nursing assessment and intervention based on the Calgary Family Assessment and Intervention Models and the Illness Beliefs Model.

Christina’s program of research is focused on Family Systems interventions with families experiencing serious paediatric illness. She was recently awarded a 2016 Health Research New Investigator Operating Grant from Research Manitoba for a study titled: “The Family Transition through Pediatric Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT): A Prospective Analysis Guided by a Family Systems-Expressive Arts Framework” (2016-2019). This study is being implemented at two research sites, CancerCare Manitoba/Children’s Hospital (Winnipeg, MB) and Alberta Children’s Hospital (Calgary, Alberta). For this study, Christina is working with multiple co-investigators and collaborators, including Pamela S. Hinds, PhD, RN, FAAN (Washington, DC), Amanda Kenny, PhD, RN (Bendigo, Australia), and Fiona Schulte, PhD, R. Psych (Calgary, AB). Her research team is using constructivist grounded theory to develop a theoretical foundation for developing and studying a family systems-expressive arts intervention in pediatric HSCT.

Christina is also studying an innovative video-feedback intervention focused on empathic communication between nurse practitioner students and family caregivers with Michelle Lobchuk, RN, PhD, Associate Professor (PI), Gayle Halas, RDH, PhD, and Wilma Schroeder, RN, BN, MMFT. This research is taking place in Dr. Lobchuk’s Caregiver Communication Research Environment (CAre Lab) based at the Grace Hospital in Winnipeg. The Canada Foundation for Innovation, Research Manitoba and other partners funded this unique research lab.

Recent University of Manitoba Today News article on Dr. West’s Research: http://news.umanitoba.ca/researcher-profile-christina-west/

For more information, contact IFNA member, Christina West. Twitter: @DrChristinaWest

Laila Mohrsen Busted, MSc, RN, is a senior lecturer, Department of Nursing Education, University College Lillebaelt located in Vejle, Denmark where she teaches family nursing science to undergraduate and postgraduate students. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Southern Denmark and her research is exploring family interventions in family focused dementia care using the practice model of Family Health Conversations (FamHC). Her qualitative research examines whether FamHC, as an early intervention for persons with dementia and their family members, reduces the burden that families experience. Follow-up family interviews will also be conducted one year after the intervention is offered.  For more information contact IFNA member, Laila Mohrsen Busted.

Eydis Kristin Sveinbjarnardottir, RN, MSN, PhD, is currently Dean of the School of Health Sciences and an associate professor at the University of Akureyri (Unak) in Iceland. 

In the autumn of 2016, a decision was made by the administration of Akureyri’s Hospital (SAk) to implement family nursing in the entire hospital (similar to the Landspitali Family Nursing Implementation Project (2007-2011). Members of the Center of Family Nursing Research and Development, Landspitali National University Hospital in Reykjavik travelled to Akureyri and offered two days of education for nurse leaders at SAk to begin the implementation process.  Unak and SAk have a formal research collaboration agreement which provides Dr. Sveinbjarnardottir an opportunity to supervise and collaborate with masters and doctoral students at Unak as they conduct research on this hospital-wide implementation of family nursing.

For a brief update about the new Akureyri Family Nursing Implementation Project that is in progress, please see the following links:

IFNA YouTube 

IFNA News Post 

Dr. Sveinbjarnardottir and Dr. Erla Kolbrun Svavarsdottir, Professor, University of Iceland are continuing to collaborate in the development and language translations of their co-developed Iceland-Family Perceived Support Questionnaire (ICE-FPSQ). The ICE-FPSQ has been translated and psychometrically tested into Swedish.  A doctoral student at the University of Lisbon, co-supervised by Dr. Sveinbjarnardottir, has translated and psychometrically tested the ICE-FPSQ  in Portuguese.  

For more information contact IFNA member, Eydis Sveinbjarnardottir.

Australian nursing, influenced by Western tradition, has a focus of engaging with families as context in person/child centred healthcare. Unlike the Anglo-Celtic concepts of health, family, and nursing, Australian Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander health is founded on wide family and kinship lines; access and connection to land and the environment; collective relationships within community; and spirituality and ancestry.

Today, nurses in Australia are competent in family as context for patient care as part of the national nursing registration standards. There is now a trend toward nursing practice that recognizes the family as focus of care using a strengths based perspective. Movement towards a broader understanding of family nursing in Australia can be seen through diverse community and child health nursing areas and acute care nursing. Family nurses are partnering with families and increasingly recognizing families as legitimate recipients of care. For example, in Intensive Care Units family nursing practices have incorporated flexible visiting to enable family presence and in cancer care multidisciplinary meetings with the family are undertaken with positive outcomes. Oncology nurses are recognizing the need for caring for the family as a unit of care and often feel under-prepared for this role – a concern frequently voiced by Australian nurses.

Australian scholars are growing a strong foundation of publications to guide family nursing education, practice, and research. For more information about family nursing in Australia, contact IFNA member Lindsay Smith.