Empowerment, effective helpgiving practices and family-centered care.

Improving practices with families of pediatric patients is most likely to occur when nurses and other health care professionals more fully understand the characteristics and consequences of different approaches to their work. A review of relevant literature in the empowerment, helpgiving, and family-centered care fields suggests the kinds of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that will optimize benefits to families in different domains of functioning. Family-centered care is a special case of effective helpgiving, and effective helpgiving is a special case of an empowerment approach to working with people seeking professional advice and expertise.