Family assessment tools: a review of the literature from 1978-1997.

Traditionally, nursing practice in critical care settings has been focused on recognizing and addressing the needs of the patient with an acute and serious health problem and individual family members. Little progress has been made in understanding how families manage this hospitalization experience; however, family health has been reported to be a significant factor in the patient's recovery. The purpose of this article is to review the literature from 1978 to 1997 that has examined family assessment tools in a variety of clinical settings. The ultimate goal of the review is to determine their usefulness for critical care environments and their congruence with family systems nursing, which is aimed at the cognitive, behavioral, and affective domains of family functioning. The following characteristics are used to review each of the selected instruments: theoretical framework; purpose; description; the unit of analysis; ease of administration and scoring; reading level; psychometric evaluation; and utility to guide clinical practice and research. Although the instruments have a variety of strengths, none of them are congruent with the philosophy of family systems nursing. Therefore instruments need to be developed that would guide assessment and interventions for nurses in critical care settings.