Family oriented primary care: Integration of screening and treatment for Families in Crisis in FNP curriculum

Crucial to the FNP role is the understanding of how to assess for and treat crises relating to social and economic factors, family transitions and chronic disease.  While NPs receive focused education on diagnosis and management, often limited effort is directed to the NP role in supporting families facing homelessness, addictions, infertility, divorce, and death and dying, along with other situational issues which may reach crisis states for families without good internal and community supports.  NPs working within diverse communities must become experts regarding multidisciplinary resources that are available to support families experiencing social and economic threats to health, and explore their role as leaders of interdisciplinary community care teams supporting families. Compounding effects of working with families experiencing crises may ultimately impact the FNP resulting in provider fatigue and burnout.

This presentation will report on two years of “Families in Crisis,” a graduate level mandatory seminar for CNM and FNP students. The course curriculum is grounded in the biopsychosocial model of care and integrates concepts of family and crisis theory as guiding frameworks for providing family centered primary care.  Discussion will focus on the integration of assessment and screening, referral to community resources and interprofessional collaboration in the areas of PTSD, infertility and adoption, addictions, interpersonal violence, homeless and incarceration, child and elder abuse and neglect, adolescent crisis, chronic disease, death and dying and provider wellness and self care. It will describe different modalities of integration of these concepts into clinical care including practice guidelines, multimedia resources including video clips and interactive case studies, contemporary TV and film series, and NP led research and interventions.

This presentation will report on students’ abilities to demonstrate and model appropriate care to families in crisis, explore how students gain knowledge on community resources, and describe students’ perceived barriers to providing care to families in crisis and how these barriers are broken down through class discussion and exposure to community resources.  It will describe student experiences in visiting local support groups or social services and how exposure to these resources integrates into the class seminar and into the role responsibilities of the APN.