CFCN key terms

Support for a person's inner life-meaning, purpose, connection, and relationship with the sacred-offered through listening, presence, prayer, and helping them draw on their own beliefs and faith community.

A structured conversation or tool used to learn how a person makes meaning, what gives them hope, and which beliefs and practices shape their health choices, so care can fit their needs.

Disruption in a person's meaning or belief system, showing up as hopelessness, anger at God, guilt, or feeling cut off from self, others, or the sacred, and calling for gentle support and referral.

Being fully attentive and available to another person in the moment: listening without rushing, judging, or steering the conversation toward your own agenda or answers.

A practice of addressing or attending to the sacred. Nurses support it when the person wishes, respect its forms, and avoid imposing their own tradition or promising particular outcomes.

Actions that help people gain control over and improve their health-education, supportive environments, and healthy policy-rather than only treating illness after it appears.

How well a person can find, understand, and use health information to make decisions; limited literacy calls for plain language, pictures, and checking understanding.

A check for understanding in which the learner restates or shows the information in their own words, letting the educator correct gaps instead of simply asking whether they have questions.

A collaborative conversation style that draws out a person's own reasons for change using open questions, affirmation, reflection, and summary, while avoiding argument, pressure, or unsolicited advice.

A model describing readiness to change as steps-precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance-used to match teaching and support to where the person actually is.

Efforts that stop illness or injury before it begins, such as immunization and hand-hygiene teaching; secondary prevention finds problems early and tertiary prevention limits disability.

A systematic gathering of information about a defined group-its needs, strengths, resources, values, and health status-used to guide decisions about programs and services.

A structured drive or walk through an area to observe housing, services, transportation, safety, and signs of community life that numbers alone can miss.

A person selected for deep knowledge of a community-faith leader, clinic staff, longtime resident-who offers perspective on local needs, networks, and how to gain trust.

The strengths a community already holds-skills of residents, associations, buildings, congregations, and informal networks-used to build programs on what exists rather than only on deficits.

A goal written to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, so a program can tell whether the intended change actually happened.

A picture linking the resources invested in a program, its activities, the short-term outputs, and the longer-term outcomes, used for planning, communication, and evaluation.

Systematic collection of information during and after a program to judge whether it was delivered as planned and whether it made the intended difference.

Deliberately organizing a person's care across providers, settings, and time-sharing information, arranging services, and following up-so nothing is lost between visits.

Helping a person find, reach, and use community services such as food assistance, transportation, or a clinic, including checking eligibility, making contact, and confirming the connection happened.

A referral that is tracked until there is confirmation the person was seen and the service began, rather than assuming that giving a name or phone number completed the work.

Working with other disciplines-clergy, social work, medicine, pharmacy-toward shared goals, with clear roles and open communication centered on the person's own wishes.

Support during moves between settings, such as hospital to home, covering medication review, follow-up appointments, warning signs, and who to call with questions.

Speaking up with or for a person to protect rights, obtain needed services, and remove barriers, always guided by that person's stated goals and consent.

Limits that keep the nurse-person relationship safe and focused on the person's needs, separating professional caring from friendship, romance, or financial involvement.

The duty to keep personal health information private and share it only with those who need it for care, with the person's permission or as the law requires.

A person's voluntary agreement to care after receiving understandable information about benefits, risks, and alternatives, given freely while the person is able to decide.

Documents that describe what a specialty nurse is prepared to do, the expected level of performance, and the boundaries beyond which more training or referral is needed.

A written statement made while a person can decide, naming a health care agent or recording treatment preferences to guide care if they later cannot speak for themselves.

An ongoing, self-reflective stance that acknowledges one's own biases and the limits of one's knowledge, treating each person as the expert on their culture and needs.

The conditions where people are born, grow, work, live, and age-income, housing, food, transportation, discrimination-that shape health more strongly than clinical care alone.

Weaving a community's own beliefs, texts, rituals, and calendar into health ministry in ways the community recognizes as its own, without blending in unrelated practices.

A trained professional who conveys meaning accurately between clinician and patient in the patient's preferred language, rather than relying on a family member or untrained bilingual staff.

Automatic associations that can shape judgment and behavior without intent; nurses reduce their effect by noticing them and using consistent, fair processes.

The timely, factual record of care-assessment, interventions, teaching, referrals, and the person's response-that supports continuity, communication among providers, and legal accountability.

A continuous, data-driven effort to make care safer and more effective by testing small changes, measuring results, and adjusting, rather than blaming individuals for errors.

A confidential internal record of an error, near miss, or unexpected event, used to find system causes and prevent repeat harm; it is not part of the clinical chart.

A structured check of a person's living space for fall, fire, medication, and other hazards, followed by practical fixes and teaching matched to the person's resources.