Family Centered Care versus Child Centered Care: The Malawi Context

Abstract

Family Centered care is a model that is practiced and encouraged in child health care. It considers family as partners and collaborators in care of children. It aims at involving family in all aspects of child care. Family centered care also mentions involvement of child. However, emphasis is given more on family than child and does not take into account the older child's capacity for independent decision making and right to privacy. As such, child's needs are missed out. With child centered care, children are involved and supported at all levels of care based on their age and developmental stage. This paper aims to stress the importance of involving children within family centered care. Involving children in their care, makes them feel less threatened by the health care professional and their self esteem is promoted. Currently, no studies have been identified in Malawi that demonstrates full partnership between the family, child and the nurse. Furthermore, Family Centered Care and Child Centered Care as models are not fully practiced. It is therefore important to practice both family and child centered care in child health care if the needs of both family and children are to be addressed concurrently.

User-provider experiences of the implementation of KidzAlive-driven child-friendly spaces in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

“…The trustworthiness of study findings was ensured through credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability [18]. To ensure credibility, we used a purposive sample of the users of child-friendly spaces and paid attention to negative cases during analysis.…”

“…Accordingly, it addresses some of the child-related complexities that may have been overlooked by the generalised patient-centred care approach [16]. Similar to patient-centred care, key principles underpinning the concept of holism are applicable to child-centred care, which include providing healthcare that puts the child at the forefront of care [6,9]; amplification of the voice of the child [9,17]; prioritisation of the child's needs and values [18]; listening to the child's experiences and interests [9,10]; and providing agefriendly information to increase children's understanding of their illness and how to manage it [11,15]. Other scholars suggest that child-centred care approaches celebrate childhood and acknowledge the cognitive, legal and cultural challenges and limitations associated with this stage of human development [9,10].…”

Issues in Implementing Family Centred Care in Pediatrics and New Approaches

“…Ancak, aile merkezli bakım sadece çocuğu değil, tüm aile üyelerini kapsamaktadır ve bu nedenle daha fazla sağlık elemanına ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır. 18,21 Aile merkezli bakım, ebeveynlerin, çocuğun tüm bakımını üstlenmesi demek değildir. Bu konuda ailenin, çocukla birlikte kalma istekleri ve yetenekleri dikkate alınmalı, çocuğun bakımına katılmak isterlerse desteklenmeli, ancak istemezler ise onlara bu konuda baskı yapılmamalıdır.…”

“…22,23 Gelişmekte olan ülkelerin kliniklerinde bakım verecek yeterli sayıda hemşire olmadığından, ebeveynler sıklıkla hastanede çocukları ile birlikte kalmakta ve beslenme, banyo yaptırma ve oral ilaçların verilmesi gibi çocuğun temel bakımına yardım etmektedirler. 21 Eğer ebeveynler, çocukla birlikte kalmazlar ise çocuk yeterli bakım alamamaktadır. Ancak bu durum, aile merkezli bakım uygulandığı anlamına gelmemektedir.…”

Family Organization in the Care of Pediatric Heart Transplant Patients: The Genogram as an Investigative Tool

“…Thus, family-centered care has enabled benefits for planning the actions of health professionals [7] [8]. Based on this, theoretical nursing development has been showing the need to include family more and more in the context of nursing care, contributing to family-centered care principles being adopted [9].…”