Family Prevention Interventions and Theory

Identify a family you know well. Do not provide the name of the family or any other identifiers regarding your relationship. Discuss interventions for primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention that are appropriate for the family identified. Then choose an appropriate theory discussed this week that would be most effective for a family nurse to integrate into meeting the health care needs of that family and explain.

ANSWER

Family Prevention Interventions and Theory

Primary prevention aims at preventing or avoiding the disease altogether. Offering primary prevention to patients ensures that they are in great shape and are likely to lead healthy lives (Baumann & Ylinen, 2020). Let us say there is a young nuclear family. It consists of two parents and one three-year-old daughter. When the family brings the daughter for a checkup, the healthcare practitioner asks the following questions. What kind of food does she eat, where does the child sleep and whether they use protective measures while in the car and riding her bicycle? The health practitioner can also ask about the child’s immunization history and whether or not they completed all the required doses. The answers given by the parents will guide the healthcare practitioner in providing preventative care for the family.

Secondary prevention happens when there is already an acute illness. This means the primary prevention strategies did not work, and the child fell off the bike, injuring their arm. The focus, in this case, shifts from prevention to detecting the problem and preventing the condition from worsening (Baumann & Ylinen, 2020). The family, in this case, receives a prognosis, the daughter gets an x-ray, and the arm is probably fixed. Tertiary prevention occurs after the first two have failed. This is the most expensive form of prevention. In this case, it would only happen if the parents did not take the child to get medical attention early. Tertiary prevention aims at restoring the patients’ health to the level that can be achieved.

The health belief theory can be applied in this nuclear family. A healthcare provider can integrate the health belief model to help cater for their needs. The health belief model focuses on the health behaviour of individuals through their attitudes and beliefs. The family does not have insurance cover, and therefore, they do not show up for regular checkups. They only show up in the emergency room with their child when they are ill. The questions that one should ask the family are whether they understand the benefits of an insurance cover. Perceived benefits can help the family acquire health insurance, thus helping the family with primary prevention. Insurance is likely to cover immunizations and other primary prevention steps needed for the family (Green et al., 2020). The nurse also needs to consider the perceived barriers. Perceived barriers involve the concerns that getting insurance could be too expensive and that they would not be able to pay the premiums. In this case, the nurse would guide the family through the cheap insurance plans that could help them regularly visit for checkups.

A family with a child is more receptive to preventive care. This means that the nurse should try to integrate these into their routine care (Schüz et al., 2019). This means giving the family the diets required to have a healthy body. The nurse could guide them on the food they can eat and the harmful food to their health. For example, one can talk to them about reducing red meat and increasing vegetables in their diet. They could use plant proteins as supplements to animal products. One could also advise them to exercise, drink water and not involve in risk behaviours such as excessive drinking and smoking. If they are already involved in these behaviours, the nurse could guide them to programs that help people quit these behaviours.

References

Baumann, L. C., & Ylinen, A. (2020). Prevention: primary, secondary, tertiary. In Encyclopedia of behavioural medicine (pp. 1738-1740). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Green, E. C., Murphy, E. M., & Gryboski, K. (2020). The health belief model. The Wiley encyclopedia of health psychology, 211-214.

Schüz, J., Espina, C., & Wild, C. P. (2019). Primary prevention: a need for concerted action. Molecular Oncology, 13(3), 567-578.