Health Assessment Paper

Questions

Health Assessment Questions

Values

1. What are the core values that the family holds towards the institution of health?
2. What are the values they think the health care system perceives as most important to the African American community?
3. How wide is the perception gap between African American health values and the general perception of the healthcare system concerning their beliefs?

Nutrition

1. How important is nutrition for the family?
2. How does the family practice proper nutrition for all its members both at home and in school or the workplace?
3. What additional nutritional adjustments does the family nutrition take during any form of health care?

Sleep

1. What are the sleep routines in this family?
2. How important is it that the sleep routines are fully implemented?
3. How important is sleep towards health?

Elimination

1. Explain the process that leads to elimination?
2. How do you identify healthy elimination patterns?
3. What are the specific methods of improving waste elimination?

Exercise/Activity

1. What is the level of physical activity?
2. What is the exercise routine mostly implemented?
3. How do they integrate physical exercise into their daily routines in an interactive way, if at all?

Cognitive

1. How would you describe your ability to solve problems?
2. How would you describe your ability to make decisions and stick to them?
3. How do you enhance your ability to follow guidelines in systematic order?

Sensory-Perception

1. What is the level of connection with all internal and external senses?
2. How has this level of connection affected other areas of personal identity?

Self-perception

1. What is the extent of community participation?
2. What is the level of social placing does the family hold in their community?
3. Which long-term illnesses has your family encountered?

Role Relationship

1. What is the family structure?
2. How strong and established is the family structure and the different roles allocated to every individual?
3. What are the perceived advantages of a clear and well outlined role structure?

Sexuality

1. How aware are all the individuals on sexuality, gender differences and gender-specific roles?
2. What are the steps made towards maintain sexual health and awareness?

Coping

1. What are the key stressors for the parents?
2. How do they deal with these stressors?
3. What is the attitude towards using medication to deal and cope with stress?

Answers

Family Health Assessment

Health assessment s a systematic, integrated and interactive process through which nurses and other medical practitioners use critical thinking to collect and analyze information and thereby evaluate the health status of different units (Flood, 2000). For purposes of preparing this paper, the family health assessment that was undertaken focused on care in the selected family unit. The assessment was based on Gordon’s eleven functional health pattern systems. This analysis will evaluate a traditional African American family that lives that paces great emphasis on their religion, culture and family values. It will look into all the eleven units, which include values, sleep, nutrition, elimination, cognitive, exercise, self-perception, role-relationship, sensory perception, sexuality and coping. Each unit will be evaluated based on an outline of open-ended questions designed to target each unit through a family-focused approach (Pardeck, 2002).

Values

The questions used for this unit took up a comparison approach, and the answers provided revealed profound differences between the actual African American health values and the values perceived by health care units. The biggest challenge is the diversity in the black community that is often overlooked by healthcare system. The most profound difference is observed between African Americans born and raised in America and recent African immigrants. The African American exhibits health core values founded on religion and cultural respect. They tend to include their religion during health care and recovery. This family trusts the medical process in its entirety but dislikes the lack of separation between African Americans and African immigrants who abide by completely different health values.

Nutrition

Nutrition is important for this family. The parents have instilled a sense of commitment and responsibility towards personal nutrition in the children. As a result, the children have a genuine and obvious sense of consciousness for proper nutrition even outside the home setting. Nutritional adjustments are often made to cater for health situations or gaps observed in their nutritional system. The nutrition package is composed of organic and traditional meals.

Sleep

While sleep and rest is valued in this unit, it is not emphasized and prioritized and a component of good health care. Strict rules apply to the sleeping timelines for the children. However, there is a tendency to associate too much sleep with laziness. With the adults sleeping for a minimum of four hours, sleep is viewed as a limitation and a hindrance to an extension of working hours and more financial prosperity especially among the adults.

Elimination

A common theme among all members is the lack of detail and concentration on the process of elimination. This unit views the process of elimination as highly automated and has not adjusted their nutrition or health practices with an aim of improving their elimination systems. While aware of detoxing as a way of improving elimination, the details or different types of detoxes are not known to the family in detail.  

Exercise

Exercise and physical activities comes in second after nutrition as a means of promoting basic health in the family unit. Physical activities are accomplished through household chores in which everyone is expected to participate. Cardio exercises such as running and swimming are common family activities that are aimed towards fitness and physical health. All family members readily associate exercise to mental health and energy.

Cognitive

Cognitive or mental health is recognized as huge part of health. Every member goes out of their way to maintain their mental stability as well as that of the other family members. Mutual respect and respect is a huge part of the family culture that is based on the African American culture and main religions. Notably, the elderly are given a position of respect and priority. Preservation of respect and role is considered the best way to reduce stress and stress related cognitive complications.

Sensory-Perception

The questions used in this pattern sought to establish the level of personal and familial awareness and connection. There was limited awareness in topics of personal feelings and emotions concerning non-physical changes in their bodies. Mental and esteem changes are given less priority to some extent. There was great evidence on changes and shifts in physical changes that are immediately recognized as health concerns for the adults and the children. Strong changes will immediately require medical consultation.

Self-Perception

This pattern also extends to the emotional and esteem components of the individuals. This extends to gauge their participation in society, social groups, school or work performance as well as the social perception and attitude towards the family during illness encounters. As the family has not had profound and long term health challenges, they have not experienced the social response towards this. Generally, the children are comfortable in school at academic and social levels. The parents are also moderately involved in the community, with the wife being an active member of a book club and a local fundraising committee.

Role Relationship

The family has a strong structure that clearly outlines every individual’s role. Every member of the family accurately outlines their role and the others’ when asked. Separation of responsibilities has created a systematic procedure and mode of operation. Ultimately, the wife is in charge of enforcing and regulating nutrition and respect while the husband takes more roles in exercise and physical security. This structure has sustained the cognitive and mental well being of the family unit.

Sexuality

Since the family is fairly young, only the parents could contribute to the notion of sexuality in great measure. Even so, the children, a boy and girl of ten and six years respectively have notable gender identities already. They understand the difference that separates them as a girl and a boy. The boy takes a protective role and the girl takes a softer role. The parents are aware and very open to discuss their wellbeing on a sexuality level. This means a clear understanding of the wife as a woman and the husband as a man in all levels. This extends from the family roles to the sexual health and intimacy.

Coping

The couple spent a considerable amount of time dealing with fertility complications before they were finally able to have children. Dealing with two children has also had its fairs share of challenges that take a bigger toll on the mother. Stress is managed through more practical approaches of eliminating or neutralizing the stressor as opposed to the talking or medication method. With more structure in responsibility allocation, everybody gets help in challenging situations from the others (Yuan and Pardeck, 1999).

Wellness Problems

The biggest challenges are the negligence of cognitive health components and self perception strengths. Emotional awareness, which is linked to these wellness problems, is often viewed as a form of weakness (Flood, 2000). Even though this family is well urbanized and exposed, the African American perception of emotions as a source of weakness threatens the processes of stress coping and self-awareness (Roberts, 1996). Furthermore, these perceptions may be passed down to their children who will be even more unable to cope with developing stressors.

In extension, this has created the problem of limited information, awareness and research on different aspects of health other than those they deem important based on cultural values. The family has notably prioritized patterns of health that have for long been valued by the African American community while progressively neglecting those neglected by the community. This shows a lack of growth in the health approach and perception by the African American community.

References

Flood, C. (2000). International Health Care Reform: A Legal, Economic, and Political Analysis. London: Routledge.

Pardeck, J. (2002). Family Health Social Work Practice: A Macro Level Approach. Westport: Auburn House.

Roberts, M. (1996). Model Programs in Child and Family Mental Health. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Yuen, F. & Pardeck, J. (1999). Family Health: A Holistic Approach to Social Work Practice. Westport: Auburn House.