Lorraine M Wright

Illness beliefs are the heart of illness healing. Our book provides a unique focus on the connection between illness beliefs, illness suffering, and individual and family healing. The Illness Beliefs Model, developed over 40 years of clinical practice and research, is the focal point of our book and offers specific family interventions that are eff...

When assisting older adults and their families, the most useful family nursing conceptual skill is embracing the belief that “illness is a family affair.” This illness belief summons a systemic or interactional focus specifically on relationship communication patterns. Uncovering maladaptive and distressing familial interactions, a family nurse can...

Much has been written about the global implementation of the Calgary Family Assessment and Intervention Models (CFAM/CFIM) and the application of these practice models in various clinical settings. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief update on the background of CFAM/CFIM, and the current applications of the models as evidenced in the...

Paradigm families and paradigm practice moments have shown me that therapeutic conversations between nurses and families can profoundly and positively change illness beliefs in family members and nurses and contribute to healing from serious illness. The integration of brain science into nursing practice offers further understanding of the importan...

The "One Question Question," first coined by Dr. Lorraine M. Wright in 1989, is an interventive question designed to elicit family members' most pressing needs or concerns within the context of a therapeutic conversation. In this article, two clinical projects analyzed the responses to this unique interventive question. The first project analyzed t...

Knowledge from practice scholarship and intervention research with families experiencing illness is synthesized into a practice model called the ILLNESS BELIEFS MODEL which addresses clinical assessment and intervention for addressing illness beliefs and illness suffering with families using a systemic approach. The four Macromoves of the ILLNESS B...

This article focuses on the history of the use of therapeutic letters in the clinical scholarship of the Family Nursing Unit at the University of Calgary and offers examples of a variety of therapeutic letters written to families experiencing illness suffering. A case study from the research of Moules (2000, 2002) is offered to further illustrate t...

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the American Association for Marriage andFamily Therapy Annual Conference, Washington, DC, October, 1979 and at the 3rd International Congress of Family Therapy, Tel Aviv, Israel, July, 1979. The author would like to express appreciationto the staff and students of the Family Nursing Unit and the...

The onset of life-threatening or chronic illness irrevocably changes the trajectory of the lives of individuals and their families. The beliefs held about the illness may affect the way individuals and family members cope with the illness as well as the illness itself. The illness beliefs model proposes that a therapeutic conversation that includes...

Nursing has a history of acknowledging the spiritual as a taken-for-granted dimension in health and illness. However, nurses and other health professionals have struggled to find meaningful ways to attend to the spiritual in practice. This article explores the notion that to inquire about spirituality is not neutral and not inquiring is also not ne...

Time is of the essence in nursing practice. Major changes in health care delivery, budgetary constraints, and staff cutbacks have required new ideas for involving families. Rather than excluding family members from health care, more efficient ways need to be determined of how to conduct brief family interviews. This article proposes that a 15-minut...

The sudden and accidental death of a child can be one of the most devastating events in the life of a family. This paper describes one couple's reflections of their grief and mourning following the death of their adolescent son as well as the clinical team's reflections of therapy. The uniqueness of this paper is that it offers a “reader's theater”...

This article describes the implementation offamily nursing skills labs with undergraduate nursing students at the University of Calgary. The intent of the family nursing skills labs is to facilitate the development of family interviewing skills of students and to apply these skills to a variety ofclinical settings. The incorporation of demonstratio...

Live supervision and family systems nursing: postmodern influences and dilemmas Evolving nursing practices in a graduate nursing education programme that offers live clinical supervision in family systems nursing can be conceptualized within a postmodern perspective. Postmodernism is described as a debate about knowledge that questions traditional...

In this multiply-authored account, five academicians discuss the connections between their work as clinicians and their clinical qualitative research. Each saw connections between practice and research, and each in her or his own domain of interest has found that practice informs research and research informs practice. This article also introduces...

Within the nursing offamilies, assessment skills have become more and more sophisticated. However, our ability to intervene in relation to the family problems that are identified has lagged behind. There is growing awareness that it is time to attend to what we do that helps healfamily suffering. This article reports on the interventions that one g...

The beliefs held by nurses have the potential to influence the beliefs of the individuals andfamiliesfor whom they care. This clinical example presents the experience of a couple who presented with marital conflict at the Family Nursing Unit, University of Calgary, about 8 months following the husband's second myocardial infarction. As the story of...

Family violence has often been conceptualized as a linear phenomenon in which perpetrators commit acts intended to hurt victims. Intervention in these circumstances involves treating the perpetrator and the victim individually. In contrast, this article presents a Systemic Belief Approach to the situation of mutual family violence. A case example i...

This article focuses on a family systems nursing approach for essential hypertension. A case example is presented that describes the approach with a hypertensive woman with agoraphobia symptoms. A clinically significant decrease in the client's blood pressure occurred following the family sessions. Clinical observations of improved family relations...

Non-compliance is not only an epistemological error but a biological impossibility This profound statement arises from the influence of Humberto Maturana's revolutionary meta-theory of cognition The definitions and significant implications of two major theoretical concepts of this meta-theory of cognition, namely structural determinism and objectiv...

Explores a family systems approach to chronic pain, focusing on a case example that describes therapy primarily occurring with the wife of a chronic pain sufferer. However, a dramatic decrease in the husband's experience of chronic pain from his osteophytes and his associated bitterness occurred during and following treatment. Clinical observations...

Argues against the use of the term "medical family therapy" since such a term may imply that the medical narrative is more significant than other narratives. Instead of relying on medical studies, the study of therapy for families dealing with physical illness should also make use of such disciplines as family nursing, social work, psychology, and...

A systemic treatment approach, namely systemic belief therapy, has been found to be useful when dealing with families constraining beliefs when experiencing physical health problems. Two interventions which facilitate the altering of constraining beliefs are the externalization of physical symptoms and therapeutic letters. Epileptic seizures are ex...

In this paper, the phenomenon of therapist stuckness is addressed and related to the experience of hypnotic induction. A case example illustrates how efforts were made through the supervision process to counter-induce the therapist. Robotization (Schwartz, Liddle, and Breunlin, 1988) (i.e., supervisee responding to exact requests of the supervision...

The utilization of the research process as an intervention has recently been described in the family therapy literature. However, it is important to draw a distinction between research as intervention and research as a unique family therapy intervention technique. From a family systems perspective, research as an intervention technique may make the...

The authors describe their observations of three trends in the nursing of families namely, increased diversity in nursing practice, increased research, and increased family content in academic settings These trends have major implications for nursing practice, research and education The authors speculate on the implications and their effect on the...

Examined the dynamics of smoking behavior within 4 families who had a member who smoked following a myocardial infarction. The smokers and spouses attended family interviews to assess and intervene in smoking behavior from a family-systems approach. A detailed case report of 1 family, with a 67-yr-old man and his 61-yr-old wife who smoked, is inclu...

Reviews the book, Toward a science of family nursing edited by C. L Gillis, B. L. Highley, B. M. Roberts, and I. M. Martinson (1989). This book is another significant indication that nursing colleagues have much to offer in advancing health-care professionals' knowledge about the reciprocal influence of families and illness. This edited text abound...

Describes the clinical work of an alcoholic family nursing team facilitating therapeutic change within a multigenerational alcoholic family system by intervening with the nondrinking family member (the 43-yr-old mother). A model combining systemic assessment with strategic interventions was effectively used by this training team. The team designed...

This paper presents a single case study of a family who was experiencing developmental problems in the family life cycle stage of the launching years. This particular family illustrates well the theoretical assumption that problems within this stage are best understood from a three generational perspective. With this particular family the core issu...

This paper presents a comprehensive and detailed outline of family therapy skills to aid in providing a more precise focus in the training of clinicians in family therapy. The skills are based on an integrated treatment model within a systems framework. Four major functions performed by a family therapist are separated and are further differentiate...

This paper presents a comprehensive and detailed outline of family therapy skills to aid in providing a more precise focus in the training of clinicians in family therapy. The skills are based on an integrated treatment model within a systems framework. Four major functions performed by a family therapist are separated and are further differentiate...

This particular case involving the suggested nursing intervention was very successful and rewarding. It is very important, however, that therapists realize that these seven steps were acceptable in this particular case, but steps four-to-seven may be modified with each couple. However, the first three steps are more than likely essential to any eff...

HAVE HAD SOME profound personal shaping experiences with illness: as a child, as a novice health professional, and as a middle-aged daughter and experienced heaIth professional. O n e of these experiences has been with my mother's chronic condition of multiple sclerosis (MS). These ex-periences have left me more compassionate and, I believe, more p...