A DESCRIPTION OF PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY CRITICAL CARE NURSES TO CULTURALLY DIVERSE FAMILY MEMBERS OF CRITICALLY ILL ADULT CLIENTS.
Contributors: University of Miami.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 299
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery.; Health Sciences, General.
Description: Since the time of the antebellum era (1861-65) and the Crimean War (1854-56), nursing's involvement with health care has gone through many stages and changes. In the critical care setting there has been a change from a dyadic (client-nurse) model of nursing care to a family systems (client-nurse-family) model of nursing care.

The purposes of the study were (a) to examine what family members describe as professional support provided by critical care nurses following the admission of a critically ill adult relative to the intensive care unit, and (b) to determine if culture influences family members' descriptions of professional support.

The sample consisted of 90 family members from three cultural groups: (a) African-American, (b) Hispanic, and (c) White, non-Hispanic. The Professional Support Questionnaire for Critical Care Nurses Working With Families and a demographic form were administered verbally to family members waiting to visit clients in the intensive care units. Crosstabulations by cultural group and descriptive statistics were computed to describe the demographic characteristics of family members and their responses to the items. Individual Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA by ranks and Mann-Whitney tests were computed to determine if the distribution of responses to the items differed among cultural groups and among demographic variables. Preliminary validity and reliability measurements were computed for the questionnaire. Family members' comments were examined for themes.

Findings of the study revealed the description of professional support among family members was unique and was influenced by culture, religion, education, occupation, income, gender, relationship to client and hospital setting.

Conclusions of the study were (a) regardless of the presence of their social support network, critical care nurses can support professionally all family members, irrespective of cultural differences and similarities, via the three dimensions of professional support: information, comfort and assurance, and (b) specifically, critical care nurses can best support White, non-Hispanic family members by providing information to maintain their independence, by providing comfort to Hispanic family members to maintain family connectedness, and by providing comfort and assurance to African-American family members to promote connectedness with the critical care milieu.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-06, Section: B, page: 3000.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI, 1993.

School code: 0125.