Teaching familynursing

This study looks at the teaching of familynursing in the broader context of nursing education. The aim was to find out how Finnish teachers in nursing colleges define the concept of family, what sort of theoretical premises lie behind their teaching, and what kind of teaching methods they use. Teachersʹ information needs, as well as the use of knowledge concerning family nursing, were also explored. The data were collected from a total of 134 teachers in 42 nursing colleges. The results are presented in the form of descriptive frequencies, percentage distributions and cross-tabulations. According to the results the teachers took a fairly broad-minded approach to defining the family, going well beyond the notion of a traditional nuclear family. Almost all teachers also drew attention to the principle of family-orientation in nursing. On the other hand, the notion of family nursing was not very familiar to the respondents. About half of them associated the family with the metaparadigmatic concepts of individual or environment. The teachers said they used various different methods to teach their students how to work with families. However, almost one-third reported that they rarely ever provided instruction in the skills needed in family interviews. Only a small minority felt that they had the necessary theoretical competence to deal with the issue and to provide adequate training. Most of the material they used in teaching consisted of textbooks, whereas research data were used very sparingly.