Strengths Based Nursing Care

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This is the first practical guide for nurses on how to incorporate the knowledge, skills, and tools of Strength-Based Nursing Care (SBC) into everyday practice. The text, based on a model developed by the McGill University Nursing Program, signifies a paradigm shift from a deficit-based model to one that focuses on individual, family, and community strengths as a cornerstone of effective nursing care. The book develops the theoretical foundations underlying SBC, promotes the acquisition of fundamental skills needed for SBC practice, and offers specific strategies, techniques, and tools for identifying strengths and harnessing them to facilitate healing and health. The testimony of 46 nurses demonstrates how SBC can be effectively used in multiple settings across the lifespan.

By taking a strengths-based approach, this book encourages nursing practice with a focus on individuals' potential and capacities rather than their limits.

This ready-to-use curriculum trains both new and experienced case managers to focus attention on older clients' remaining strengths instead of losses. Teaching modules cover all skills needed to establish a successful helping relationship, use effective strategies and develop goal plans. Includes reproducible handouts and exercises.

Preceded by Conceptual models of nursing: analysis and application / [edited by] Joyce J. Fitzpatrick, Ann L. Whall. 4th ed. c2005.

Moving away from the usual medical-modeled framework of mental health focused on problems, Strengths-Based Supervision in Clinical Practice by Jeffrey K. Edwards takes a postmodern, social construction approach, looking for and amplifying strengths and encouraging stakeholders to use them. Based on research in brain science, as well as from the Information Age/Connectivity Age thinking, the book reframes the focus of supervision, management, and leadership to one that collaborates and builds on strengths with supervisees as competent stakeholders in their work with their clients.

Praise for Educating Nurses "This book represents a call to arms, a call for nursing educators and programs to step up in our preparation of nurses. This book will incite controversy, wonderful debate, and dialogue among nurses and others. It is a must-read for every nurse educator and for every nurse that yearns for nursing to acknowledge and reach for the real difference that nursing can make in safety and quality in health care." —Beverly Malone, chief executive officer, National League for Nursing "This book describes specific steps that will enable a new system to improve both nursing formation and patient care. It provides a timely and essential element to health care reform." —David C. Leach, former executive director, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education "The ideas about caregiving developed here make a profoundly philosophical and intellectually innovative contribution to medicine as well as all healing professions, and to anyone concerned with ethics. This groundbreaking work is both paradigm-shifting and delightful to read." —Jodi Halpern, author, From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice "This book is a landmark work in professional education! It is a must-read for all practicing and aspiring nurse educators, administrators, policy makers, and, yes, nursing students." —Christine A. Tanner, senior editor, Journal of Nursing Education "This work has profound implications for nurse executives and frontline managers." —Eloise Balasco Cathcart, coordinator, Graduate Program in Nursing Administration, New York University