The role of child health nurses in enhancing mothering know-how.

Full Abstract

Supporting early parenting and promoting family health is an important aspect of contemporary child health nursing in Australia. Recent studies suggest that within a service climate that increasingly funds targeted, population-based needs rather than universal needs, child health nurses are concerned about maintaining individual nurse-client relationships, particularly with individual families. There is however, limited evidence available to use in response to these concerns. In this paper the way a group of middle-class mothers of infants, who, in today's health service climate, may not be a target group for health services, develop their caregiving know-how, is discussed. The findings presented suggest that both expert and lay knowledge have a part to play in supporting women in their early mothering. Women such as these, in essence, need a clearing-house to help them sift through the overwhelming information they access, respond to, and turn into everyday practices that work. Well placed child health nursing services may achieve this. While there is significant support for this claim in the literature, mechanisms for effective support remains the challenge. A key may be found in nurses focusing on the promotion of communicative or interactive health literacy as an outcome of their programs.

Author information

Author/s: Rowe, Jennifer (J); Barnes, Margaret (M);

Affiliation: School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University, Queensland. jennifer.rowe(-atsign-)griffith.edu.au

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Collegian (Royal College of Nursing, Australia) (Collegian), published in Australia. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Oct; vol 13 (issue 4) : pp 22-6

Dates: Created 2007/02/08; Completed 2007/03/13;

PMID: 17285827, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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