Families want to tell their stories and clearly have a need for nurses to develop relationships with them while caring for their ill loved ones. Family interviews both affirm the family and give nurses greater understanding of family issues, concerns and meanings.

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Nursing care of families is essential to strong family support and maintenance of family health during a critical illness. Secondary data analysis of interviews conducted with 11 families with a family member in the intensive care unit revealed two essences: the family critical illness experience and the family vision for the kind of care families required and desired from nurses. The purpose of this article was to explicate the essence of these phenomena and their implications for family nursing practice. Findings affirm the need for a family intervention described in the literature, that of regularly scheduled nurse-family meetings. Although developed for work with families experiencing a chronic illness, bringing families together and inviting meaningful conversation about their experiences is appropriate for families experiencing critical illness. Nurse-family meetings acknowledge suffering and vulnerability of families when a loved one is critically ill and afford families an opportunity for honest sensitive communication with nurses.

( 2 0 1 1 ) ( 2 0 1 1 ) Journal of Nursing and Healthcare of Chronic Illness 3, 283-292 Reintegration within families in the context of chronic illness: a family health promoting process Aim. To describe the processes families use to manage family life in the context of a chronic illness and build theory that clarifies elements of the family processes. Background. Illness has been described as a family affair triggering families to shift their individual and family patterns as they attempt to manage ongoing life with a chronic illness. Family processes are central to the tasks and goals of a family living with a chronic illness. One in two families will experience a chronic illness in the next decade, hence it is important that research focus on understanding family processes that can influence health of the member with an illness and family health. Design. Grounded theory methodology was used for this study. Nine families participated with 46 participant family members interviewed aged between 6-75 years. Families included members with varied chronic illnesses. Semi-structured, audiotaped interviews with group analysis methods focused on family level data. Data were collected in 2005. Results. The central phenomenon was identified as an ongoing process of reintegration within families in the context of chronic illness. Recognising the vulnerability and reality of chronic illness prompts families to initiate reintegration within a context of uncertainty presented by the specific illness and its ongoing management. As a result of the caring strategies chosen by families, a pattern of engagement with Ó 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 283 the chronic illness was developed that focused on ongoing connecting, pondering, relating and struggling. Conclusions. A model of reintegration provides new understandings of ongoing family processes of a chronic illness. Supporting the evolving family as they engage with the chronic illness through processes of connecting, pondering relating, and struggling promotes family health.Relevance to clinical practice. Findings provide direction for health professionals planning family interventions to support family caring strategies and family processes as families engage with the chronic illness.

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