Assessment is the key to identification of appropriate support and intervention in family health care. Current reviews of assessment tools and practice are being utilized in health prevention and intervention programs. The family, its function, structure, rules, and beliefs are known to have a significant relationship to the health behaviors and illness outcomes of family members (Gillis & Knafl, 1999; and Marmot & Wilkinson, 1999). Currently there is no standardized approach by which interdisciplinary health professionals are trained to conduct family health assessments. The University of Florida Health Science Center interdisciplinary team of health professionals conducted the initial development and administration of the FHS for the Interdisciplinary Family Health course. A 48-item health focused scale contained 11 social support items, 16 health behavior items, and 21 health belief items. This exploratory focus group study was designed to identify how the different health professions responded to the utility of the FHS as a measure for specific aspects of family centered health care assessment. The focus group included social work, medicine, dental, pharmacy, physical therapy, and interdisciplinary health professionals whose aims included: 1) The examination of the faculty's perceived usefulness of the FHS questionnaire for interdisciplinary health care training in family health assessment. 2) The exploration of the interdisciplinary collaborative team members' perspectives on family preventive health behaviors as identified by the FHS. 3) The identification of potential health and social problems that may impact health outcomes by using the FHS. The six health profession focus groups agreed that the FHS questionnaire was a useful tool for training interdisciplinary health profession students in family health assessment, but limitations of the survey tool existed for clinical practice. Responses suggested that using the FHS can identify a whole families health needs and inform the IFH students family health project planning. Issues related to improvement for the future re-design of the FHS were identified, and the challenges and opportunities for the interdisciplinary health professionals actively involved in the assessment process are recognized. / A Dissertation Submitted to the College of Social Work in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2006. / October 25, 2006. / Interdisciplinary Health Training / Includes bibliographical references. / Neil Abell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Marie Cowart, Outside Committee Member; Nicholas Mazza, Committee Member; Mary Ann Burg, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_175950 |
| Contributors | Waddell, Rhondda F. (Rhondda Faye) (authoraut), Abell, Neil (professor directing dissertation), Cowart, Marie (outside committee member), Mazza, Nicholas (committee member), Burg, Mary Ann (committee member), College of Social Work (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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