Question

describing how a family assessment is different from an individual patient assessment.

Answer 1

• Family assessment is a systematic method of assessing the family members including the patient.
• In this a family's needs, strenths and weaknesses, resources etc are assessed.
• In an individual assessment only the individual is examined for any health issues or any problems.
• But in family assessment each and every family member will be examined and from each member we have to collect the history.
• While doing a family assessment we can identify new health issues in any of the members if present.
• For eg. We are visiting a family in which both the parents are hypertensive and diabetic. In this we can do a urine sugar test or check the glucose level in blood ( random blood sugar test) in other family members too to detect whether they are in risk of such diseases.
• But in individual assessment we are focussing to the health of the individual only.
• Also we can monitor the well being of children and old age people in the family during a family assessment as they are the vulnerable population.
• Many health care issues in the children (like anemia, malnutrition etc) can be found during a family assessment.
• A family assessment is usually done during the home visit but an individual assessment is done when a person visit to the hospital.
• It is cost effective also as every family members can assessed and there is no need to approach the doctor for doing each member's assessment.
• By doing a family assessment we can interpret the needs of that family and help them to achieve it with the help of different support systems available.
• Thus, a family assessment can resolve many helath problems within the family.

Note: A family assessment is done rule out the strengths and weaknesses in a family and resolve it. But in an individual assessment we can find any health issues of that particular individual only.