Family Health Assessment
Jeff Yu
Grand Canyon University

Family Health Assessment Assessments are one of the greatest tools used in helping to create health care plans with family nursing diagnoses, in mind, for people and their families. A thorough and complete assessment places an emphasis and upholds family health (Edelman, 2010). This essay focuses on a single-family unit and their vision of health utilizing multiple questions derived from the 11 health patterns outlined in Gordon’s functional health patterns (Edelman, 2010). The couple selected for the interview is a couple of English and German decent having lived most of their lives in California. The father is 69 years old and the mother is 64 years old. They have three adult male children that are 34, 32, and 30 years old. The eldest son continues to live with the parents while the two younger sons have moved out and have established families with young children of their own. The eldest has mental and physical disabilities that were developed due to complications during childbirth. The couple continues to keep close relations with both of the two younger children and their families while continuing to be the main providers for the eldest son. The husband use to smoke but has quit for 9 years now. Both do not drink or do illicit drugs. The father is severely overweight, has non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, and peripheral vascular disease. He continues to work fulltime to help provide for the wife and his eldest son. The mother no longer works having lost her job recently due to downsizing within the company. She continues to look for jobs that she would be able to perform but states it is difficult to find a position due to her age. She has a medical history of hypertension and is considered pre-diabetic. Both state that they know they need to be more active but do not have the time or the energy to be physically active. The father’s diabetes affects his metabolic function in respect to metabolism and nutrition. His nutrition requires a low sugar and low glycemic index meals. The mother’s hypertension requires that she consume a low sodium diet. The mother is the primary grocery store shopper and prepares the majority of meals. An average dinner meal consists mainly of beef, vegetables, starches, and a desert such as ice cream or pies. The couple was advised to change eating habits to promote a healthier lifestyle. Recommendations to reduce portion sizes and to replace pies and ice cream with fruits was recommended. They also consume large amounts of sweetened and unsweetened ice tea, diet cola, and only drink small amounts of plain water. They both realize the need for a change in nutrition and states that they have attempted recently to change eating habits to provide a role model to their grandchildren to eat healthier. They state that they use to eat larger portions and significantly more unhealthy than even the meal that they described. The couple does not appear to have difficulty with fluid intake. The couple states that over the past couple of years the father has had intermittent episodes of uncontrollable diarrhea to the point that he now wears adult briefs to help stay clean. He also states the need to wake up urinate more frequently during the night, at times he is required to wake up 4 times to urinate and on average he has to wake up at least twice in the middle of the night. The wife denies any changes with urination. Constipation appears to be the biggest concern for the wife. She states that she can experience constipation once or twice every month and takes over the counter stool softeners to aid with bowel movements during the constipation periods and typically has no other issues with elimination. Many of the complaints regarding elimination may be brought on by age, diet, disease process, or the prescribed medications. The father takes on the role of the breadwinner of the family being the sole income for the family and