Image--the journal of nursing scholarship
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Homelessness in the United States continues to be a major social problem directly affecting an estimated three million persons, of whom nearly 30 percent belong to families without permanent shelter. This paper reviews recent research concerning homeless families and the conditions in which they live and outlines the significant health and mental health problems that these families experience. Effective nursing interventions for homeless families using Peszneckers' Model of Poverty are proposed. Nurses must advocate for changes in the social and political conditions that bring about homelessness since the resources to meet the needs of these families are either nonexistent or woefully inadequate.
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Organ donation, considered by sociologists as a type of gift exchange, involves moral, social, psychological, religious and legal issues. This gift exchange paradigm can be used as a framework to understand donor and recipient issues, cadaveric organ donation and the importance of the role of nurses during organ procurement.