A Family Belief Systems Theory for Transcultural Family Health Care Nursing

To enable culturally congruent family health care nursing, the family belief systems theory proposed by Hohashi can be utilized. The family belief systems theory, developed through family ethnographic studies and questionnaire surveys conducted in the United States, Japan, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, explains (a) structurization of a system, based on the family member’s beliefs as cognition criteria, in which family member’s emotions, decisions/acts, and physical responses (including health problems) occur; and (b) the process in which family beliefs are formed from family members’ beliefs, by which intentional decisions/acts by the family (family decision making, family self-management, etc.) are performed. By identifying the mechanism of family belief systems, the nursing professional, through support for family/family members’ beliefs, can completely change the intentional decisions/acts by the family.