Element 5: Coping Differences And Supports

“Element 5: Coping Differences and Supports” is about acknowledging and respecting various methods of coping and providing families with different types of supports to meet their diverse needs (ANA, 2008). Families of children with special healthcare needs having differing abilities to adapt and overcome challenges. Providers and nurses can empower families by using nursing interventions such listening to and accepting all family members, establishing a direct relationship with the chronically ill child, and prioritizing the family’s perceived needs rather than the nurse’s perceived needs of the family. Additionally, nurses can help by providing accurate and complete information regarding the child’s condition, symptom control, and future implications of the chronic condition, guiding the family in assessing its strengths, helping to build a peer support group of families with the same or similar chronic health condition, and acknowledging the family’s good care of the child …show more content…
Nurse practitioners can elicit information about these qualities for each family to help create a plan of care that treats the whole family. Commendations are one strategy to do that. Commendations identify strengths and can help reduce a family's suffering (Limacher & Wright, 2003). They also bring out more of the illness narrative by encouraging a child to participate and speak out (Limacher & Wright, 2003). Limacher and Wright (2003) offer advice on non-verbal commendations. They state that it is a mistake to focus only verbal commendations, and that children especially may respond to nonverbal interventions such as gestures, tone, silence or listening. It is important to establish a therapeutic relationship first in order to be effective and not come off as condescending or insincere. (Limacher & Wright,