[The nursing process in helping a family with foreign mother and hearing impaired child]

This case report aims to present a nursing experience involving a child with severe hearing impairment and delayed language development. The patient was discovered during a home visit. At the time she was two and a half years old, but still had not developed any language behavior. She only used eye contact, physical touch, and body language to communicate with her family. She also did not respond to sound stimulation. The results of a Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) showed delayed development, especially of language. The child's mother is from Vietnam. The culture, education, language, and environment of Vietnam are totally different from Taiwan. In addition, the mother did not know how to raise her child. So the author tried to follow up on the case. Data were collected by home visits, phone calls, interviews, and communication with members of a professional health care team during the nursing care period (about six months). Data were recorded and it was written a processing analyzed. They revealed five health problems, as follows: (1) hearing impairment causing delayed language development; (2) poor family recognition deviation understanding of delayed development; (3) insufficient community resources; (4) low self-protection, limited capacity for caused by hearing impairment; (5) foreign mother's sense of helplessness about raising the child. The author provided supportive care to the patient and her family, counseled them, and transferred the child quickly to a treatment center. She also coordinated resources and the professional care team in assisting the parents in facing and adapting to the child's developmental delay. As a result, the parents gained knowledge and the ability to make judgments about developmental delay. This fostered a positive attitude on their part and acceptance of the child's admission to the treatment center. The child and family could deal with their problems appropriately because the nurse intervened at the appropriate time with the aim of reducing the obstacles to their doing so. This enabled the child's handicap to be minimized and her potential to be developed.