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Public health nurses in New Zealand practice in urban and rural communities promoting health and wellbeing for school aged children and their families. Despite employing a family-centred approach little is known about the use or efficacy of family nursing tools in public health nurses’ practice. One such tool, the 15 minute family interview, was the focus of this qualitative, collaborative, educative study. The aim of the study was to explore 16 public health nurses’ knowledge and use of the five components of the 15 minute interview; manners, therapeutic questions, therapeutic conversations, commendations, and a genogram and ecomap. Focus groups were used to gather data in pre and post-intervention phases with PHNs using either a genogram or ecomap in practice over a three month period during the intervention phase. Several themes emerged from a thematic analysis of pre and post-intervention data. The latter analysis reinforced the former themes. The unrealistic nature of a 15 minute interview in public health nursing practice became apparent as the study progressed. Nevertheless participants consistently used four of the five components; manners, therapeutic questions, therapeutic conversations and commendations. Moreover the fifth component, an ecomap and genogram, while not consistently used, became the study’s focus from which a hybrid ‘ecogram’ emerged. Furthermore the study illustrated the changing and uncertain context in which public health nurses practice with increasingly complex and vulnerable families. Despite having limited transferability the findings reveal possibilities inherent in using family nursing tools to enhance relational practice, which, in turn, can improve family health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecomaps are diagrams that depict an individual or a family within a societal context, demonstrating the energy, supports, and resources necessary to maintain specific relationships. Genograms are family trees that identify emotional relationships and intergenerational family patterns. When combined, practitioners can synthesize the information to demystify the intricate web of social systems and the tension and strain between families and other systems such as schools. For the purposes of this paper, ecomaps will portray genograms in the center to symbolize a family system, as a sort of snapshot in time. This paper illustrates six typical yet successful cases at an alternative school in which ecomaps were used as an interdisciplinary method of communication among systems when working with families in the school community. The ecomap provides a common language and understanding of problem-saturated families by depicting families and students as participating members of the school community who have feelings, emotions, and relationships that may influence the students' ability to perform in school and become productive citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]