Family-centered care in the perioperative area: an international perspective.

Family-centered care developed after research showed that children were emotionally compromised if separated from their parents during traumatic episodes. Few places within the health care system are more foreign and frightening to a child than the surgical department. Perioperative nursing evolved as a way to care for patients admitted to the OR for surgery. Family-centered care provides a model for the care of a child within the perioperative environment. This article examines the development of both family-centered care and perioperative nursing from a historical perspective and explains how family-centered care can be applied to perioperative nursing.