Family Health Promotion
For the nurse to be successful in its role towards family health promotion, it is important to familiarize itself with the Gordon’s eleven functional health patterns. These patterns serve as basis for nursing diagnosis and health promotion. It focuses on how developmental tasks are completed by the family, it assist with learning about health perception and beliefs; it also assists the nurse to formulate health promotional goals and ways to improve family’s overall health practices (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). This author will use the information collected from the Duarte’s family by using the eleven functional health patterns to identify risk factors and dysfunctions in order to identify areas of interventions, and promote positive changes towards achieving ultimate goal of optimal health. The Duarte’s were very open and enthusiastic in answering questions formulated from each functional health patterns by Gordon. These questions made it easier for this author to assess and collect adequate data that was necessary in making nursing diagnosis, and sound judgment about their functional health patterns in areas of: Values, health perception, Nutrition, Sleep/Rest, Elimination Activity/Exercise, Cognitive, Sensory-Perception, Self-Perception, Role Relationship, Sexuality and Coping. The Duarte’s are interracial couple both born outside the United States but met here, got married, and are now raising two children ages 8 and 3 years old. Mr. Duarte is 67 years old, born in Mexico; he migrated to America with his first wife and 3 children in 1979. He divorced his wife, met and married current Mrs. Duarte who came with her parents to America from South Korea as a child. She is 37 years old, 30 years younger than her husband. They seem happy together. Mrs. Duarte is the main breadwinner of the family because her husband sustained a serious back injury while training aspiring boxers at his privately owned boxing club last year. This family has a