Family Bond Nursing: An Innovative Path To Nursing Care

I celebrate every Nurse on the Fellow Nurses Africa platform. It is indeed a great honour and privilege to grace this platform and share by novel nursing care concept. With profound gratitude I thank the founder and executive team of the Fellow Nurses Africa for this platform where Nurses can glean from and impact their sphere.

I am delighted to bring to your awareness an idea of nursing care which focuses on the family. Family here means any form either biological or social.

Family Bond Nursing: An Innovative Path to Nursing Care
I can’t help but acknowledge the works Nurses are doing in Africa and all over the world. It appears the future of nursing is here!

Today, I shall be taking us on a journey of how I came to be the innovator of Family Bond Nursing.

My story will be interwoven in the explanation of Family Bond Nursing as a new nursing care path. So, kindly follow keenly.
I am the fourth child of six children and for some reason, the middle child tends to be the peacemaker or mediator in the family. This was exactly my case as a child.

I found myself always asking and soliciting for peace.
I am taking my time to brief you in my life’s journey because what we do eventually in life as a passion often times takes its cue from our life’s experiences.
I am a product of a broken home yet to me, my dad was the best dad in the world. He died before I clocked 12years.

So, I had to do live with an uncle. Living there wasn’t much of an experience I would want to relive.
However, I made up my mind to make something good out of the unpleasant experiences I had
growing up.  Many times, I found myself asking a lot of questions like :

Why can’t families live peacefully?

Why do we fall sick if we can prevent it?

I kept asking questions like “what’s the big deal? Why can’t we just tolerate one another?

I believed strongly that anything is possible if we set our minds to it. Including living with totally unfamiliar people.

How did I come about this concept?

The death of my father dealt me and my siblings, especially my mom a very hard blow.

It took courage and togetherness for us to come through and still be a family. I usually say that if there were passionate and compassionate Nurses on duty at the hospital where my dad was taken to following a ghastly road traffic accident, worst case, my dad would have been on a wheelchair.
If only the nurses or doctors then knew how important he was to us.
If only they new that he was taking  care of six children while their mother was away studying.
If only they knew that he had so many familiar issues confronting him.
If only they knew how much he loved his children and how he had laboured hard just so that they have a better life than he. If only… If only…

So, I began to nurse the thoughts of becoming a professional caregiver. I wanted to care for people and I didn’t wait till I got into Nursing school, I started with my immediate environment.
I cared about how we related with one another as a family. I cared about our interactions. I cared about how each person’s attitude made the others feel.

I desired a holistically bonded and happy family. I also wanted to help families live a well structured life in order to prevent them from experiencing what my family went through following my father’s death. Then I got into Nursing school…. ✌

The second event that further pushed me into creating this concept was an event that played out during my first clinical posting
Mr M. O was admitted into the Male Medical Ward and was being managed for High Blood Pressure.

His Blood Pressure read 210/160 mmhg at the time I began my clinical experience. You would agree with me that that’s a killer value. But upon seeing him, no one would tell he was grossly unwell.

Classmates and RNs kept on trooping to and from his bedside. They were all saying the same lines as though they just came out from a rehearsal…
They were saying;

“Ah ah, you are too young to be thinking now… “

“what are you thinking about “

“stop worrying now”

I found myself soliloquising..

“is this all nursing

is about? “

I then asked my inner mind, from where I draw strength, “what do I do, what do I do”

Mind you, this was just six months into Nursing school.
As soon as I got the release to approach Mr M. O, I walked quietly and deliberately to his bedside.
Upon establishing rapport, I discovered he had five psychological issues which are; he lost his dad, lost his job, his mother was being forced to sell household items to foot his medical bills, his illness was preventing him from pursuing his passion, he didn’t like what he studied in school and he wasn’t married.

It took about three days of psychotherapy and the BP which had reduced to 190/120mmhg crashed to 140/80mmhg.

His medical team were shocked. They were oblivious of my intervention.

After due deliberations, Mr M. O was discharged home.
When I saw the outcome of my interaction with him, I was overjoyed.

I said to myself Yes! Nursing can be really interesting.

What I deduced from that encounter and many others was that many medical illnesses have a psychological undertone.
So, I decided to focus more on bonding with my patient and the outcomes were awesome!

I love bedside Nursing, because of the effect my interactions with patient bring. However, the hospital environment in this clime to me is too negative and toxic for my person.

I am repulsive to toxic character, negativism and pessimism
That is why those who know me or have related with me would hardly catch me complaining or murmuring or blaming.

Naturally, I’m a preventive person. I have a gift of just identifying possible loopholes so I get proactive in order to prevent mishaps.

May I state here that I am very passionate about the family.

So, here was the crux of my resolve to create Family Bond Nursing…

1. Healthcare professionals are somewhat distant from their patients relationally. If caregivers relate more with their patients armed with the mindset that their physical illness could affect other aspects of their health and life, we could register better nursing and patient care outcomes.

2. Many medical illnesses have a psychological basis. Basic family life challenges people face could manifest as physical illnesses.

3. Relational issues are basic in the family as the smallest social unit. Therefore, if families were more bonded and closely knitted, they would have more internally generated support to their collective well-being whether sick or well.

4. Prevention is by far better and cheaper than cure. If one’s family life is stable, there are minimal chances of being crushed by physical illnesses or loss.

All the above summed up as pillars for Family Bond Nursing

So, what is Family Bond Nursing?

Family Bond Nursing is a care concept that amplifies the implications of human responses on their psychosocial health.

It seeks to help families discover and or create common grounds that will engender bonding, emotional stability and sustainable well-being.

For now, I drive the family bond nursing care with three preventive interventions iced with existing familial nursing interventions.

The three preventive interventions are:

1. Well and Safe Child™

This is a program designed to give a reorientation as regards the ideal meaning of sexuality.

If I were to ask us what we understand by sexuality, I’m very sure many responses would be similarly incorrect.

This program focuses on the holistic development of children. It seeks to make out of children, emotionally competent and responsible adults, spouses and parents.

I have designed a workbook to facilitate this learning. There are more to come.

2. Pregnancy, Emotions and Sex™ (PEAS)

This is another signature program that I run for couples. This is geared towards minimizing the emotional and  sexual disconnect that occur among couples during the period of pregnancy.

Studies have shown that 6 out of 10 men would cheat on their pregnant wives.

Also, from counselling many couples, there are two complaints that are very common among the pregnant ones and this are:

1. Wives: my husband doesn’t care, he leaves me to attend to the baby all by myself.

2. Husbands: since my wife got pregnant, she doesn’t give me sex

The friction or disharmony that occur during pregnancy could lead to postpartum blues or depression. It may also result to impaired parenting.

So the PEAS model is to help pregnant couples keep their emotional and sexual relationship intact and reduce the chances of postpartum blues or onset of impaired parenting.

Pregnancy should draw couple closer to themselves and not tear them apart.

3. Parenting From Conception™

This is the third model in family Bond Nursing.

Here, I coach and educate engaged, newly married and child bearing couples on possible pregnancy outcomes and how to prepare for it.
This model prepares couples for parenting. Parenting is now a very serious challenge for many parents today and so many are crying for help.

This program covers the formative age of the child. With this, parents would find it easier raising their children
I recently added a fourth model and that’s the School-Family Bond Systems.

This is to encourage the involvement of parents in their Children’s School life in order to change better learning outcomes.

Studies have shown better learning outcomes and less behavioral issues among children whose parents are involved in their school lives.

Remember, this is based on addressing psychosocial issues so that people don’t breakdown with avoidable medical illnesses that could result from untreated psychosocial challenges.

I use the Family Systems tools alongside Neurolinguistic programming and our own Nursing Interventions among others in serving my clients.

I am working with some nurse researchers to evaluate and document the effectiveness of these interventions. I train and I coach.
2018 promises to be a great year. And I’m looking at training some nurses who would work with families so that the ills claiming lives like domestic violence, preventable illnesses would be uprooted.

One of my role models, Donna Carrillo once said, when it comes to caring, there are no boundaries.

This buttressed what I used to say over 10years ago, “there’s more to Nursing than bedside nursing”.

Let me round up with this:

Nursing is the most lucrative professions I’ve ever known, I do not for one day regret coming into it.
Thank you so much for having me share this virgin knowledge.

If only you believe in yourself, nursing will give you the wings to fly!

To be a part of the training coming up in the first quarter of 2018, you can send “Family Bond Nurse Training” to +2347037160615

Your family well-being is my prime concern.

Julie Mogbo
The Family Bond Nurse ®