Family

Illness does not occur in a social vacuum. A patient's symptoms, treatment decisions, and recovery are influenced by who provides care, how the household responds to stress, and which supports are available outside it. Family assessment makes those influences visible without assuming that every family has the same membership, values, or decision-making style. The Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) gives the nurse a disciplined way to examine family structure, development, and function. A genogram traces family patterns across generations; an ecomap shows relationships with health care, work, school, community, and other systems. The Calgary Family Intervention Model (CFIM) uses those findings to select interventions that fit the family's strengths, needs, and goals. Within US psychiatric-mental health nursing, professional standards extend assessment to the family and larger systems because a symptom plan can fail when surrounding relationships, roles, or resources are not understood. For a US RN, apply family assessment as part of patient-centered nursing practice within the applicable state nurse practice act and organizational policy. Include family when clinically appropriate and permitted, but do not let relatives replace the patient's...