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Assessment of the needs of critically ill / injured patients' famalies in an accident and emergency unit

The critical illness/injury of a family member warranting an admission to an A&E unit can predispose a family to psychological and physiological needs. The patient-centred-care approach rendered in an A&E unit focuses on the patient as a priority, resulting in the family’s needs being neglected during a crisis situation. Based on the Family Resilience Framework, the aim of this study was to assess the needs of the families of the critically ill/injured patients in an A&E unit. Based on the identified needs, recommendations were made with regard to a family-centred-care approach as a relevant resilience-based strategy suitable to these families. The research adopted a quantitative, non-experimental, exploratory and descriptive design. A purposive convenience sample of 100 participants was recruited over a period of four months. The data were collected by means of a structured interview schedule. The study revealed that the five main domains of family needs identified by the respondents as very important was, in order of priority, the need for communication, support, meaning, comfort and proximity. The findings supported the need to initiate and foster a family-centred-care approach in the A&E unit, which could guide the nurse practitioners in supporting the affected families, which in turn could enable these families to become resilient. Copyright / Dissertation (MCur)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Nursing Science / unrestricted

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/26551
Date22 July 2010
CreatorsPhiri, Lesego Margaret
ContributorsDr T Heyns, Prof S P Hattingh, lesegolm@telkomsa.net
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
Rights© 2010, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

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