High-Risk Family Assessment and Health Promotion
Mary Ann Bennett
University of Phoenix
NUR/542
Melinda Church
August 6, 2012

High-Risk Family Assessment and Health Promotion Assessing health needs is a fundamental nursing skill. Unfortunately, many nurses only associate the assessment process to the individual patient they are caring for and fail to assess and address the needs of the entire family. Performing a family assessment is vital, especially when working with high risk individuals and groups. High risk families can be defined as those families with a higher than expected risk for developing a particular disease or injury in association to their lifestyle, environment, habits, or socio-economic …show more content…

Exaggerated responses can include inability to sleep, startled responses, spontaneous anger outburst, and overindulgence in drugs, alcohol, smoking, and negative sexual behavior. The clinical interview is the most common method used by family nurses for assessing individuals for PTSD. The most important factor the family nurse must understand is that when a patient and his or her family present to a medical facility seeking help, they often are weary in asking for help and need a trusting environment in order to be open with their past experiences and current issues. According to Briere and Scott (2007), the nurse must show empathy, avoid body language or judgments that show disgust, show sensitivity when forming questions must be aware of avoiding behavior, and remember speaking of traumatic events may evoke undesirable reactions. The family nurse will most commonly perform a clinical interview first with the veteran as he or she seeks professional help. However, a family assessment/interview should be conducted to obtain the family member’s perspective and needs. These interviews should be followed by a joint interview allowing each party to say and hear the other side’s perspective and to agree jointly to development of a plan and intervention. Some clinician may use more structured assessment tools to conduct interviews that are more geared toward assessing stress and traumatic responses. These can include the Clinician-Administered