A student nurse is caring for a 4-year-old patient who has been admitted to the pediatric unit with ...

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When you view the family as context, your primary focus is on the health and development of an individual member existing within a specific environment (i.e., the patient). Although you focus the nursing process on the individual's health status, you will also assess the extent to which the family provides the individual's basic needs. When you view the family as patient, the family processes and relationships (e.g., parenting or family caregiving) are your primary focus of care. When you care for the family as a system, you are caring for each family member (family as context) and the family unit (family as patient), using all community, social, and psychosocial resources. Families are continually changing. As a result, the need for family support changes over time, and it is important for you to understand that the family is more complex than simply a combination of individual members.