Paper
Thursday, July 12, 2007
This presentation is part of : Family Health Strategies
Use of the Hybrid Model to Develop the Concept of Family Wellness
Nancy A. Kofoed, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, USA
Learning Objective #1: Describe the use of the Hybrid Model for an orignal research project.
Learning Objective #2: Explore the meaning of family wellness for low-income mothers as it relates to the concept of wellnesss found in interdisiplinary literature.
 Optimal health and wellness have been the goal of nursing practice since the days of Florence Nightingale. Habits that support wellness are most often developed in the context of the family. Studies which addressed the concept of family wellness (especially in diverse populations) were needed to help clarify the conceptual perspicuity that existed in nursing and other healthcare literature. The Hybrid Model was chosen as the best process of bringing scholarly rigor to the development of the concept of family wellness..

The Hybrid Model consisted of three phases: (a) the theoretical phase, (b) the fieldwork phase, and (c) a final analytical phase. An evolutionary method of concept analysis was employed during the theoretical phase. Due to the scarcity of the term family wellness in interdisciplinary literature, approximately 120 journal articles were perused to produce a concept analysis of wellness. Antecedents, attributes, and consequences were identified to assist in the construction of an interview guide.

Secondly, in the fieldwork phase, participant interviews were utilized to discover what the concept of family wellness meant to 14 mothers of children in low-income families. Constant comparative analysis was used to discover family wellness attributes within the interviews. An exemplar case that exhibited the attributes of the concept was chosen.

 During the final analytical phase, the concept analysis of family wellness was compared with interview information from the mothers. An Explanatory Framework of Family Wellness was constructed which showed the attributes of and relationships among individual wellness, family wellness, and community wellness. By using the Hybrid Model to develop the concept of family wellness, a beginning step was made in identifying the needs of families as they strive to support wellness. 

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