Wendy L. Watson Nelson (born May 31, 1950)[1] is a Canadian-American marriage and family therapist, and professor. She worked with the Family Nursing Unit (FNU) at the University of Calgary (U of C) from 1983 to 1992, training graduate students to use family systems therapy with families of patients. Her academic work in articles and in the book Beliefs: The Heart of Healing in Families and Illness helped develop a practical and theoretical framework for family systems nursing. She is the wife of Russell M. Nelson, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
Wendy Watson Nelson | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 31, 1950 |
| Education | University of Hawaii, Manoa (BA) Brigham Young University (MA) University of Calgary (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Family therapist, professor |
| Spouse | Russell M. Nelson |
Education
editWendy Watson grew up in Raymond, Alberta. She is the second of three children born to Leonard and Laura McLean Watson.[2][3] She received her RN certification from the Calgary General Hospital School of Nursing in 1970.[4] She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1973 and a master's degree in marriage and family therapy at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1975.[4]
Career
editBeginning in 1980, Watson practiced as a marriage and family therapist part-time, which she continued until at least 2004.[5] She started teaching at the U of C as an assistant professor on the nursing faculty in 1981,[5][6] and completed a Ph.D. in family therapy and gerontology there in 1984.[4] In 1986 she became an associate professor on the nursing faculty.[5]
Watson co-edited The Cutting Edge of Family Nursing in 1990, in which she co-authored a chapter describing the FNU at U of C, a unit that provided family therapy to patients and training to graduate nursing students. This work was a clinical application of the family systems nursing taught at U of C's nursing program. The family systems nursing approach used knowledge of nursing and family therapy to focus on the family as the "unit of care", where "the family's ability to change depends upon their ability to alter their perception of the problem".[7]: 95–97 Watson was the education coordinator in the FNU from 1983 to 1992.[5] In her work with the FNU, she wrote and produced five educational videos.[7]: 104 The U of C awarded her a Teaching Excellence Award in 1991.[5]
In 1993, she joined the BYU College of Family, Home and Social Sciences as an associate professor in the marriage and family therapy graduate program.[5] From 1994 to 1997, she was a reviewer for the Journal of Family Nursing.[5] In 1996, she co-authored Beliefs: The Heart of Healing in Families and Illness with Lorraine M. Wright and Janice M. Bell.[8] The authors developed the Family Systems Nursing Model, a "world famous model for family nursing practice".[6] Larry Mauksch, reviewing the book in Families, Systems, and Health, commended the extensive literature review and approachable prose, but criticized the book's method of identifying and analyzing moments of change in therapy as unscientific. Mauksch wrote that the book "extended the application of narrative approaches beyond psychosocial problems to broader, biopsychosocial-spiritual contexts".[9] The book was later translated into Swedish and Japanese.[5] Watson's work on the book and with the FNU is often cited as helping to develop the family systems nursing framework.[10][11][12] Watson became a full professor in 1997.[5] She has written many journal articles and book chapters during her academic career.[5]
Nelson chaired BYU's Women's Conference in 1999 and 2000. She has spoken internationally at more than 200 scholarly conferences.[8] She retired in May 2006.[4]
Personal life
editShe and Russell M. Nelson were married in the Salt Lake Temple on April 6, 2006, while Nelson was a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.[3]
References
edit- ^ "Wendy L. Watson". Mormon Literature & Creative Arts Database. Harold B. Lee Library.
- ^ Sterzer, Rachel (February 11, 2016). "RootsTech 2016: Close friends Wendy Watson Nelson and Sheri Dew discuss family history". DeseretNews.com. Archived from the original on February 14, 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
- ^ a b "Elder Russell M. Nelson Marries Wendy L. Watson". www.mormonnewsroom.org. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. April 6, 2006. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
- ^ a b c d Moore, Carrie A. (April 7, 2006). "Elder Nelson marries BYU professor". DeseretNews.com. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Watson, Wendy L. (April 14, 2004). "Marriage & Family Therapy - Dr. Wendy L. Watson". Dr. Wendy L. Watson. School of Family Life, Brigham Young University. Archived from the original on April 14, 2004. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
- ^ a b Boschma, Geertje (2005). Faculty of nursing on the move nursing at the University of Calgary, 1969-2004. Calgary, Alta.: University of Calgary Press. ISBN 1552381129.
- ^ a b Bell, J.M.; Watson, W.L.; Wright, L.M., eds. (1990). The Cutting Edge of Family Nursing (PDF). Calgary, Alberta: Family Nursing Unit Publications.
- ^ a b "Wendy L. Watson". BYU Speeches. Brigham Young University. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
- ^ Mauksch, Larry B. (1997). "Beliefs: The Heart of Healing in Families and Illness". Families, Systems, & Health. 15 (Winter): 465–467. doi:10.1037/h0090129. ISSN 1091-7527.
- ^ LeGrow, Karen; Rossen, Beth Ellen (July 24, 2016). "Development of Professional Practice Based on a Family Systems Nursing Framework: Nurses' and Families' Experiences". Journal of Family Nursing. 11 (1): 39. doi:10.1177/1074840704273508. PMID 16287817. S2CID 6187415.
Given the attention that "family nursing" has received during the past 2 decades with the development of clinical practice settings (Anderson & Valentine, 1998; Wright, Watson, & Bell, 1990); educational programs (Bell, 1997; Deatrick, Feetham, Hayman, & Perkins, 1993; Hanson & Heims, 1992; Richards & Lansberry, 1995; Wright & Bell, 1989); six international family nursing conferences (Bell, 1996, 2000; Bell, Wright, Leahey, Watson, & Chenger, 1988; Feetham, Meister, Bell, & Gilliss, 1993; Krentz, 1991); publication of family nursing textbooks, several with revised editions (Bomar, 2004; Denham, 2003; Friedemann, 1995; Friedman, Bowden, & Jones, 2003; Hanson, 2001; Vaughan-Cole, Johnson, Malone, & Walker, 1998; Wright & Leahey, 2000); and the Journal of Family Nursing dedicated to family nursing research, practice, theory, and education, nurses are becoming more aware of the need to include families in nursing care.
- ^ Bell, Janice M. (May 7, 2009). "Family Systems Nursing". Journal of Family Nursing. 15 (2): 125. doi:10.1177/1074840709335533. PMID 19423766.
Despite Segaric and Hall's (2005) critique that the conceptual distinctions between family unit and family systems are still messy, a recent Google Scholar search of the term Family Systems Nursing uncovered 1,950 citations focused on applications of Family Systems Nursing to practice, research, and education. Many of these publications have been written by faculty or graduates associated with the Family Nursing Unit, University of Calgary, where opportunities to observe Family Systems Nursing practice and receive live supervision of clinical practice were available for the past 25 years (1982- 2007; Bell, 2003; Bell & Wright, 2007; Flowers, St. John, & Bell, 2008; Gottlieb, 2007; Wright, Watson, & Bell, 1990; Wright, Watson, & Duhamel, 1985).
- ^ Anderson, Kathryn Hoehn (July 24, 2016). "The Family Health System Approach to Family Systems Nursing". Journal of Family Nursing. 6 (2): 103–119. doi:10.1177/107484070000600202. S2CID 72865647.
Family systems nursing combines family and health knowledge with advanced practice skills that simultaneously encompass multiple systems, including individual, family, and larger systems, in health and illness (L. M. Wright, personal communication, January 1994). Process-oriented intervention strategies of Wright, Leahey, Watson, and Bell (Wright & Leahey, 1984, 1994, 2000; Wright, Watson, & Bell, 1996) form a therapeutic strategy base to employ differing theoretical and practice models in family nursing.