The importances and limitations of whole family approach on visiting nursing care in Korea ; Considerations of two cases that family members were suffered from patients severe condition

In general, when a family member has a serious or chronic disease, whole family members suffer from various negative changes. Like many other northeast Asian countries, Koreans has traditional concepts of family. For this reason, there are many limitations that influence RNs active, advanced nursing care for senile patients, and for family members. We want to show you two cases about this problem.

CASE1. She was 85 years old, who has been diagnosed of thyroid cancer for 1 year. When she was diagnosed of cancer, it was too late to treat. When we met her, fist-sized cancer mass hanged from anterior neck, and there was large skin defect around the mass. Her chief complaint was huge cancer mass, but family members' was not. Their chief complaint was foul-odor from cancer mass discharge. They could not invite any friends or guests, and even they lost their appetite. Despite her chief complaint, we decide to manage foul odor discharge first. With these procedure, we tried to educate family members about the reason of foul odor and other unhappy changes originated from cancer mass. And we reminded them about the suffering of patient.

CASE2. She was 77 years old, who has been bed ridden status for over 10 years after CVA. At first visit, we found 13 pressure sores with various grades, and the most severe sore was grade 4. Family members never care patients, and even did harm things such as inappropriate patches on sores. We decided to educate family members while we treated pressure sore. After that, there was positive change of family members behavior.

Behavior of family members interacts with patients condition. Despite of many limitations and hard situations in Korean visiting care, we always try to care not only patients, but also whole family.