Family nurse practitioners (FNPs) are registered nurses who have taken additional qualifications and are trained to work in their field. They provide a range of primary and specialty healthcare for children and young people, from infants to teens. As well as focusing on preventive care, they carry out assessments and monitor the long-term health of young people.
Working with families and children can be difficult at times, as both can feel stressed in a medical environment. However, helping young people regain their health and supporting their parents through trying times is always extremely rewarding. Nursing professionals with plenty of compassion and excellent communication skills are ideal candidates for this role.
Training to become an FNP
There is currently a significant surge in demand for FNPs as the general lack of healthcare workers continues to impact the medical system. Therefore, to make it easier for busy working nurses to train and qualify for this senior position, universities such as Carson-Newman have created remote learning opportunities. Their Online Master of Science in Nursing — Family Nurse Practitioner Program is delivered 100% online and includes local clinical placements that fit in with each student’s existing commitments. For registered nurses who want to advance their careers and have wondered what is it like to become an FNP, this 32-month course offers an ideal solution. Once they have graduated, new FNPs can find employment in hospitals, where they will deliver bedside care, and clinics, where their focus will be more on offering guidance, preventive care, and treatment for common childhood complaints.
Providing patient-facing pediatric care
When a child is ill, the experience can feel stressful for parents and the wider family, as well as the sick child. Mothers and fathers can often feel guilty, even though the illness is not their fault, and frightened for their children. In these situations, there are various ways that family nurse practitioners can ease the burden on parents.
As well as looking after the child’s health, they will support parents and create a confidential relationship with them, so parents feel able to ask questions and receive honest, compassionate responses. Nurses will also work to assess the family dynamic regularly to ensure everyone is coping and offer guidance when it comes to making decisions about a child’s care. When it comes to the sick child, the FNP will make every effort to get to know them in a personal way, as well as provide quality medical care.
Family nurse practitioners are trained to deliver specialized pediatric care. They can perform a physical examination, carry out assessments, and order further testing if required. Although they can treat all the most common childhood ailments, they also have expert knowledge of rarer chronic illnesses. The majority of FNPs can write prescriptions if necessary and get the young person started on a course of medication.
Along with delivering care, they will plan a care schedule with the wider health team and also the parents. The FNP will answer any questions the parents have as thoroughly as they can and use layman’s terms that are easily understood by people with no medical training. They will also teach them and the child about self-care and the healthiest lifestyle choices they can make.
The FNP can also use other methods, such as telemedicine, to provide care when necessary, such as if the child is discharged from the hospital. FNPs will explain to the family and the child if they are old enough, what the effects of the illness could be in the short and longer term on the child’s general development and growth.
Offering guidance on child development
Parenting is never easy, and many people will turn to the FNP in their local physician’s office for advice on child development. These trained professionals are on hand to provide non-judgmental guidance on every stage of a child’s progress, from sleeping to eating, toilet training to accident prevention. Whether a child is doing well or falling behind, an FNP can help to ensure they have the same life chances.
FNPs can start supporting parents at the earliest stage by talking to them about building a positive relationship with their baby, breastfeeding concerns, and a baby’s needs. As the child gets older, the focus can shift to keeping the child safe, providing a stable environment, and maintaining a support network of family and friends. This will include establishing a home that feels safe, acting in a loving way towards the child, and spending quality time with them. Moreover, FNPs can advise parents on the best ways of keeping a child’s development on track by ensuring they get enough sleep, have their nutritional needs met, and are given the opportunity to exercise.
For parents in remote communities, the relationship they have with a family nurse practitioner can be very therapeutic, as the FNP can provide reassurance that their child is developing as they should be. Should the child have special needs, the FNP can arrange for the parent to meet a professional who can offer further guidance and provide the details of community groups that can offer support.
Many FNPs also offer developmental screening for children, which examines how a child is developing in more detail. They will pick up on any key milestones that have been missed and may indicate a problem. Then, they can refer the parent to a specialist or physician who can arrange for an evaluation. Understanding the reasons for developmental delays is useful, as it means children get help at the earliest stage and have every chance of doing well in the future, both socially and at school.
Delivering preventive care to children and adults
The US government’s Healthy People 2030 initiative — aimed at improving the nation’s health within a decade — singles out preventive care as being key to reducing ‘the risk for diseases, disabilities, and death’ but acknowledges that ‘millions of people in the United States don’t get recommended preventive healthcare services.’
It is clear that at every age, preventive care is crucial, but when it comes to pediatric care, the work of FNPs in delivering it is especially vital. That is because when conditions are found early, they can often be treated more effectively or eradicated. As a result, medical issues are less likely to negatively impact a child’s future health, their growth, and their development.
As they have a unique role in many communities, FNPs are ideally placed to connect with families and offer parents, as well as their children, preventive care right from birth to adolescence. The focus will be on promoting the good health of each child at each stage in their life. They will do this in a primary care setting, so parents do not have to travel far. They can simply bring their child along to a nearby clinic or physician’s office to obtain all the basic care that a child needs in the early years. FNPs can offer counseling to parents who have concerns or questions, provide information and education, and give vaccinations.
Keeping up with the standard vaccination schedule is one of the foundations of preventive medicine in child care. Young people are given a range of vaccinations to provide them with protection against measles, chickenpox, polio, and other types of infectious diseases. These jabs are also important for adults, but when the full program is completed at the pediatric care stage, the child enjoys immunity at the earliest point, and this can minimize the chances of them contracting a preventable condition and experiencing complications as a result.
Even when parents do not make a special visit to their local clinic, the routine appointments that are sometimes referred to as well-child visits are often used to offer a range of services. These visits give parents — who may otherwise be too rushed to book an appointment — the chance to discuss their child’s health and gain advice on preventive care.
As children are not capable of managing their own health independently, pediatric preventive care is mainly aimed at their parents. FNPs will work in collaboration with mothers and fathers because they are the ones who make healthcare choices on behalf of their children.
Providing a family-centered care approach
From creating a care plan to implementing it and evaluating how the medication and treatments are working, family-centered care is at the heart of what FNPs try to do every day. This approach is focused on a partnership between the professionals who are providing the care, the patient who is receiving it, and the family of the patient. The emphasis is placed on collaboration, be it with the patient, in an age-appropriate way, or with their family. It involves every care setting the patient is in and ensures that anyone who is defined as part of the family can participate in decision-making and care.
Family-centered care aims to prioritize the well-being of the sick child and to help them and their family maintain a degree of control over their treatment path. It is based on the fact that any young patient’s family is their ally when it comes to their continued treatment outside of the hospital and their eventual recovery. Indeed, research has shown that children can enjoy better health outcomes when family-centered care is used. It can also improve the patient’s healthcare experience, boost staff satisfaction, and ensure resources are allocated wisely.
This is because family-centered care promotes respect for the patient and their family. In practice, that means listening to their opinions, understanding their beliefs, and making these a part of the child’s healthcare plan. Furthermore, medical professionals who work using this model of care are open about sharing information with the patient and their families. This allows parents to be active participants in their child’s care and to make more informed decisions when the time comes to do so. Essentially, family-centered care is about collaborations between healthcare professionals at all levels, the family, and the FNP, who can act as a point of contact between each stakeholder.
Offering emotional and mental health support to parents
Few situations in a parent’s life are more distressing than seeing their child ill or suffering. As well as managing their feelings of stress and fear, parents must support their child, who is in an unfamiliar and often confusing environment. Furthermore, many families have more than one child, so the siblings of the patient are also affected by having an ill brother or sister.
To support families who have sick children, FNPs can do several things. First, they can reaffirm that the parent is needed and offer suggestions about what they can do to make their child feel more comfortable. They will encourage parents to talk about their feelings, ask questions when they need to, and share how they are coping. Often, FNPs will provide a compassionate listening ear; at other times, they may need to be more authoritative, for example, when it comes to sending an exhausted parent home for a night of rest.
FNPs understand that parents cannot always stay with their children, be it because they have other children to pick up from school or work commitments. They will talk parents through ways of negotiating time away. Often, this involves being around for meals and bedtimes, as this is the routine a child is often used to, and it can be very comforting when they are not at home.
In general, FNPs will encourage parents to take breaks from the ward environment, even when they do not have other commitments to attend to. Taking some time out, even if it is for a meal in the hospital’s restaurant or a walk around the grounds, can relieve some of the stress involved with caring for an ill child.
To feel more confident in spending time away, parents can let the FNP know they are leaving and when they will be back, as well as provide their cell phone numbers so they are always contactable. In many children’s wards, the team, in collaboration with the FNP, will create an information sheet aimed at helping parents cope with the various emotions and anxieties they may have when a child is unwell in the hospital.
Carrying out care coordination work
Children who are under FNP care because they have complex health needs or are living with a chronic condition often need to be seen by a range of health professionals. This could include physical therapists, counselors, and physicians, as well as social workers. For parents who are attempting to care for a sick child and manage their feelings, navigating these meetings and sessions can be an extra burden.
That is why the FNP will shoulder some of the load. They will maintain communication with the systems and services within a hospital or wider healthcare team that the child needs to rely upon. This does not just take pressure from a stressed family; it also ensures that the child receives a consistent quality of care, and as a result, it minimizes the risk of visits to the ER and hospitalizations.
The exact nature of an FNP’s role in coordinating care will depend on the condition a child is living with. FNPs plan their work around the patient’s current health and their family situation. Part of this will involve working with the child’s parents to ensure they understand the roles of each person in the healthcare team they see. This allows the parent to understand what aspect of the child’s care each professional is focused on and what their scope of practice is. Should they need to contact someone about a specific aspect of their child’s care or a new symptom, they will have a better idea of who to approach first.
Once an FNP has established a coordinated plan, they will usually write it down and share it with every member of the care team, as well as the family. Although it is not a permanent document, because the child’s needs will be regularly reviewed, it provides parents with an idea of what is happening and what they need to be aware of in the short term. Furthermore, as they have access to a child’s electronic health records, FNPs will add updates to the health information system at their facility and share these with both the relevant clinicians and the family.
Conclusion
FNPs provide multiple services and interventions that better children’s health outcomes and support the families of young people. Using their medical knowledge, diagnostic competencies, and critical thinking skills, family nurse practitioners strive to keep children safe and promote good health habits.
As well as ensuring children meet their developmental milestones, FNPs counsel parents on day-to-day childcare issues such as establishing routines, self-care, and preparing children to be independent.
Young children especially are not able to articulate their symptoms and explain what is wrong, but as skilled practitioners, FNPs can perform assessments, offer screening, and diagnose a range of conditions. Along with providing preventive care, FNPs are ready to be advocates for children and families and ensure every young person can expect excellent outcomes under the US healthcare system.
