PREVENTATIVE WORK WITH FAMILIES IN THE COMMUNITY: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF HEALTH VISITING PRACTICE.
Contributors: University Of Manchester (United Kingdom)
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 340
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF.

The aim of this study was to learn how experienced health visitors conceptualize and evaluate their health visiting work. Data were gathered from forty-five experienced health visitors from 13 health authorities in the north west of England. The basic psychosocial problem uncovered in the data was health visitors' need to provide a service and clients' need to fulfil personal needs and goals. The unifying theme of giving and receiving integrated the major categories into the key analytic framework in this study.

The health visitor's initial offer appears critical in establishing herself as a helpful person to clients. Clients who perceive the health visitor's initial offer as helpful usually respond in a way that enables the health visitor to progress with her health visiting work. A positive response may also enable the health visitor to move from the initial presenting health issue and "open up" other needs or problems. In situations in which the health visitor does not offer the client something which is perceived as needed or helpful, difficulties in carrying out further health visiting work occur.

Health visitors' conceptualization of their practice has a major influence on their helping offers and the criteria they use to evaluate their practice. While most health visitors acknowledge that their primary client in families with young children is the child, they vary as to their conceptualization of other family members as also important in their work, the interventions they direct to other family members (when possible), and the criteria they use to assess the effectiveness of their helping offers. Likewise, their conceptualization of what are needs, problems, and difficult situations influences the interventions they offer and their assessment of the success of their interventions. Not all of clients' health needs are attended to by helping interventions such as health teaching, supportive counselling, and referral.

In the concluding chapter, the potential implications of this research are explored. It is suggested that health visitors' success in promoting health and preventing illness in clients may be enhanced by careful attention to what they offer clients and the processes through which these offers are made. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-07, Section: B, page: 3397.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER (UNITED KINGDOM), 1990.

School code: 0618.