JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Burdening health and illness issues such as physical or mental illnesses, accidents, disabilities, and life events like birth or death influence the health, well-being, and functioning of entire families. In family systems care, healthcare professionals address both, families as systems and individual family members, to recognise and relieve their suffering and to facilitate their functioning, health, and well-being. A Family Systems Care Unit (FSCU) has recently been established as a real-life lab in a Swiss University of Applied Sciences. In this unit, healthcare professionals conduct therapeutic conversations with families and individuals experiencing burdening health and illness issues to support daily symptom management and functioning, soften suffering, and increase the health and well-being of the family and its individual members. These conversations are observed in real-time through a one-way window by other healthcare professionals, students, and researchers, and are video recorded for research and education. The conversations are prepared and reflected on by the clinical team, students, and researchers in pre- and post-sessions.

Objective:

In this research program, we aim to deepen our understanding of (1) how the therapeutic conversations support families and individuals experiencing burdening health and illness issues, and (2) how the FSCU lab setting facilitates the learning process of healthcare professionals, researchers, and students.

Methods:

We apply a transformational action research design including parallel and subsequent sub-studies to simultaneously advance both knowledge and practice in Family Systems Care. Qualitative or mixed-methods case-study designs will be used to explore the situations of families and individuals and the effects of the therapeutic conversations by evaluating the recordings of the therapeutic conversations and measurement instruments. The learning processes of professionals and students will mainly be investigated with qualitative or mixed-methods study designs, applying single and focus-group interviews and/or measurement instruments. The data will be analysed with established qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods data analysis approaches suitable to the corresponding sub-studies.

Results:

We expect new insights concerning the effects of therapeutic conversations, the applied family systems care theoretical models and interventions. We expect to give families and individuals a voice on their strengths, challenges, suffering, and healthcare-related needs. Lastly, we expect to discover whether and in what way the FSCU as a real-life lab improves on traditional ways of learning and collaboration.

Conclusions:

With this action research program, we will advance our own practice and add to existing knowledge of family systems care. Moreover, we will contribute to the health and well-being of a significant number of families and individuals and to the advancement of the expertise and skills of novice and expert healthcare professionals.