Increasing use of research in clinical practice is inevitable, and therefore, integrative reviews can play a greater role in developing evidence-based nursing practices. Because of this, nurse researchers should pay more attention to sound integrative nursing research to systematise the review process and make it more rigorous.

The results have a number of practical applications for nursing, both for clinical practice and research. The results can be used in paediatric hospital wards caring for chronically ill children and their families. The five domains of family health promotion described here should be tested in other paediatric wards and in other geographical locations.

This article describes the subjective health views of young Finnish families with children. The data were collected in unstructured focused interviews with 19 families, most of whom were interviewed twice. Set within a phenomenological-hermeneutic framework, the study applies a qualitative method in order to uncover the meanings attached by the families to different facets of their everyday life. Health is an integral part of the everyday life of families with children, comprising various dimensions of experienced well-being and unwell-being, security and different life-habits. Social networks are crucial to family health: they can either strengthen or undermine experienced health. Professionals working with families in the health care system need to have at least a basic knowledge of the different dimensions of family health: this helps to identify and understand the individual ways in which families work to promote their health and well-being. This knowledge of family health is also important for research purposes. Health care professionals also need to know more about how families cope with their everyday problems and about how client families can be supported. More research is needed on the concepts of family health and on how those concepts are applied to practice in different health care sectors and in education.

The findings indicate that nurses used different strategies while promoting family health during a child's hospitalization. The systematic way of working with families identified in the study seems a useful strategy. All three strategies of family nursing described here should be tested in other paediatric wards and in other geographical locations.

Health and well-being are basic concepts to nursing science and also important to practical nursing care: to provide effective nursing we need to have a good understanding of both health and well-being. Experienced health has been studied quite extensively at the individual level, but the family's point of view has been very much neglected. This study collected data on families' views on health and well-being in interviews with nine families. The interviews were held in a group situation, with all family members present, and they were structured around the three core themes identified by Astedt-Kurki in her doctoral dissertation: 'doing, knowing, feeling'. The emotional bonds that tie together family members may be a factor in the family's tendency to produce rich and detailed knowledge about their well-being in interview situations. On the other hand it is also possible that the family will try to convey as positive an image of itself as possible. For reasons of reliability the nine families taking part in this study were interviewed twice.

The purpose of this study was to explore changes in family health associated with child's chronic illness and hospitalization. The aim was to answer the following questions: (i) What kind of changes do families experience when a child in the family is afflicted by a chronic illness; and (ii) What kind of changes do families experience when their child is admitted to hospital? The data were collected in 2002 in interviews with 29 such families whose children were receiving treatment or who had previously received treatment on the paediatric wards of two hospitals in Finland. Data were collected until reaching theoretical saturation, in which no additional data are found. Data analysis was based on the grounded theory method, proceeding to the stage of axial coding. Family health was formed out of two different dimensions: the constituent systems and the resources of family health. The constituent systems describe the impact of the child's chronic illness and period of hospitalization at the level of both individual family members and the family as a whole. These systems were described by five categories: (i) ill child at the centre of family attention, (ii) siblings in a minor role, (iii) the child's illness governs parental well-being, (iv) the roller coaster of the couple relationship and (v) the whole family is ill. The resources promoting and maintaining family health were divided into six different categories: (i) creative and maintaining mental images, (ii) active involvement, (iii) internal coping means, (iv) reinforcement of coping means, (v) awareness and change of values and (vi) social network shares emotional burden and responsibility for care. The results of the study show that family health is highly vulnerable when a child has to be admitted to hospital because of a chronic condition. They should help nursing staff gain a clearer picture of the depth and diversity of family health and support the resources that promote family health. Future research should study the methods of family nursing used in the care of families with children with chronic conditions.

PURPOSE: Paediatric oncology nurses encounter challenges with families on a daily basis. This study explores how nurses describe significant incidents when encountering families and family members during the child's hospitalisation in the paediatric oncology unit. DESIGN AND METHODS: A qualitative study with a phenomenological approach in which 17 paediatric oncology nurses from three different hospitals described critical incidents related to families. The participants' written descriptions were analysed using inductive content analysis. RESULTS: The results indicate three domains where critical incidents occur: 1) Families' capability and resources, 2) parents' behaviour and 3) emotional labour in paediatric oncology nursing. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that paediatric oncology nurses face situations with patients' parents that can cause them stress and uncertainty, as well as burden them emotionally. Some of the incidents dealt with difficult ethical questions. Because of the challenges that families are facing, as described in the study, nurses need to focus more on helping families identify their resources and empower themselves in order to adapt to a new situation in their lives. IMPLICATIONS: The results provide important information not only for paediatric nursing but also for education and management. Since the quality of family nursing does not only depend on the competence of nurses or available resources, nurses should receive support from management concerning their work with families of severely sick children. In addition, educational interventions need to be developed in order to strengthen the capability of nurses to successfully respond to challenging situations with families.

Aim To analyse nursing research based on the CINAHL database to identify research priorities for nursing. Design A scoping literature review was conducted. The CINAHL Plus (EBSCO) Full Text was searched between 2012–2018. Methods Out of 1522 original publications, 91 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tools were applied. Data were analysed by a thematic analysis method. Results A strong emphasis should be put on development and evaluation of nursing theories and, in addition, randomized controlled trial studies, meta‐synthesis, experimental and intervention studies are needed in nursing research. Development of competencies and skills in the nursing profession ought to be studied more extensively and research should be focused on variety fields of nursing practice.