The Importance Of Nursing Role In Patient Education

Regrettably, the existence of nursing depends on the medical inadequacy of others. Unfortunately, nursing exists because people get hurt, cannot care for themselves, or need assistance with daily activities. Carol Taylor (2011), author of Fundamentals of Nursing: The Art and Science of Nursing Care, writes, “Nursing care involves any number of activities, from carrying out complicated technical procedures to something as seemingly as holding a hand” (p. 5). Taylor explains it is the duty of a nurse not only to learn the pertinent skills but also to bond with and comfort others. Nurses have to do and become many things: They must be stern when necessary, compassionate when needed, open minded

In school everyone learns differently; however, according to the article The Myth of Learning Styles, “The idea of learning styles is based on a theory… developed in the early 1980’s.” (pg 1.) A lot has certainly changed from the 1980’s as we learn new more material in every class we take. With this being said, someone the scientists referred to in the article “assumed” that learning styles challenged the way of the educational system when in reality, it is simply a myth. Students, like myself, only prefer to process information that they find useful or interesting to him or her. Thus giving us the problems of that teachers may take too long to cover one idea, and students may miss out out on information because he or she did not prefer that learning style.

For years, there have been many theorists who have shared their views on how individuals learn. Such research has determined that individuals have different learning styles. It is important for teacher to understand the learning styles of both themselves and their students because it helps them to relay the subject knowledge to the students. The teacher is in a position where they must be able to assess the learning styles of their students. This means that the students and teachers are both in a process of learning.

The nurse’s role would be to evaluate first the patient’s level of understanding of their disease. It is important to also include a patient’s support system when teaching. The nurse must give the patient information about his or her condition in a form he or she can easily understand so the patient can develop a genuine comprehension of the disease process. After the patient has a good comprehension of the disease, he or she can then apply this knowledge to his or her own situation. When this knowledge is applied to a patient’s own situation, the patient is then able to ask questions and form a new way of thinking about living with the disease. When these steps are accomplished, the patient will then be able to create a plan that would help in achieving his or her goals in regards to living with the disease process. As nurses caring for patients with chronic illnesses, recognizing where patients are at in their journey with learning about their chronic illness, and meeting them where they are will help when educating and guiding them to the next step.

It is practical to assume that students will do better in tasks that reflect their particular style of learning, so knowledge of students’ learning styles, including a variety of tasks will make teaching more inclusive. A learning style questionnaire could be handed out at the start of a course which, once completed will inform the teacher about the learning styles of the students.

“Just as students have different personalities, they also have different ways of learing (Slavin, 107).” Learning styles are another important factor to incorporate when implementing the best learning environment. Learning styles are defined as an individual's mode of gaining knowledge. The most common learning styles addressed are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Auditory leaners understand information through hearing. Visual learners need more visual aids in the learning process, such as diagrams, webs, or pictures. Kinesthetic learners learn better by using manipulatives or by being physically involved in the learning process. Learning styles is a piece of the “backbone” of differentiated learning. Both are used to individualize instruction to help students achieve the most success.

The learning style survey reflected that I am a strong visual learner. The survey was extremely accurate and has a strong correlation as to why certain subjects are easier for me to be successful in than others. For example, math is easier for me to grasp than literature based courses. Mathematics is comprised of complex formulas and diagrams. Explicit modeling must be done by the instructor (solving problems on the board and drawing diagrams) in order to effectively teach math. This is a direct contrast to literature instruction.

Patient education has been a vital role for nurses. Over the years, the importance of educating patients has shown to improve outcomes and decrease re-hospitalization. With the advancement of technology in patient education, it has shown increase patient engagement and helps patients play and active role in their healthcare. These technologies can be used in the hospital, medical offices, at home and even on mobile devices. This gives several different opportunities to education patients and different ways for the patient to choose how they prefer to receive the information. Information technology helps with patient engagement which improves patient satisfaction, experience and positive outcomes (Patmon, Gee, Rylee & Readdy, 2016). These

Thus, advanced nursing practice and education is scrupulously indispensable to boost and augment the figure of eligible, highly trained and skilled nursing staff and educators. Having adequate and sufficient education indicates guarantee of having enough nurses to care for patients and families, not only for today but also for the next generation. Above all, nurses must have the compassion to give hands-on and practical care to patients and its relatives and the society, as a whole be it in a hospital setting and in the community.

Nurses take on educator roles both in educating the public on their health and as educators in clinical practice and academic settings. As a public educator, nurses teach and counsel patients and families to enhance health and well-being. Patient and family health education is an important step in preventing disease. In order to be able to properly educate their clients on health promotion and well-being, nurses must first fully understand “health”. Nurses do not view health as “the absence of illness” but “define health as the extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs and to change or cope with the environment in which they live.” (CARNA, 2005, p.2). Nurses hold a holistic view of the person and health and address health within the context of a person’s wholeness, including biological, emotional, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. Incorporating these ideas, nurses use the determinants of health as a way of dealing with and achieving health for an individual. Nurses recognize the broad determinants of health as income & social status, education, culture, physical environments, gender, health services, social support networks, employment & working conditions, health services, personal health practices, and biology & genetic endowment.

Education benefits individual mentally, emotionally and physically by placing them in better place than they were previously before. Everybody would agree that learning something new would take place throughout the life. Learning style defined as "A term that describes the variations among learners in using one or more senses to understand, organize, and retain experience" (Reid, 1987, p. 89). Furthermore, Felder and Henriques (1995, p. 21) explained learning styles as "the ways in which an individual characteristically acquires, retains and retrieves information". However, different learners possess different characteristics and different preferred learning styles to perceive, process, take in and understand information.

Learning styles and barriers to learning can be by the VARK to give a profile of learning preferences of how a person takes in and gives out information or Tidwell and Rodgers Practical learning styles Questionnaire. The VARK learning styles determines if the person learns by being a theorist, reflector, activist and/or pragmatist. The practical learning styles questionnaire looks at how people learn by their orientation, whether they are a realistic or creative, by their interaction, are they a doer or a thinker, by how they represent things, either by words or pictures, and how they process information, whether they are a surface or deep processor. There are many other

Willingham, D. T., Hughes, E. M., & Dobolyi, D. G. (2015). The scientific status of learning styles theories. Teaching of Psychology, 42(3), 266-271. doi:10.1177/0098628315589505

Learning styles is one of the ways schools have changed over the past couple of years in regards to diversity. The varieties of learning styles of students have become more

Patient education plays a vital role in nursing, and as first year nursing students it is important to our career to develop skills in the process of teaching as well as developmental theories. To practice this teaching process, we conducted two interviews with a 19-year-old female currently in the early adulthood stage. Ghorbani, Soleimani, Zeinali and Davaji (2014) state that patient education has been shown to reduced anxiety of patients and improve the satisfaction of health care. Client education is also said to improve the quality of life, helps to reduce illness complications, maximize independence and ensures that continuity of care is present (Bastable, 2014). Although within the health care system things preventing or decreasing the effectiveness of patient education may include nurses not have the knowledge of what to teach or how to teach it and lack of time and resources (Ghorbani et al., 2014). To understand further the important of patient education we must possess a knowledge of the education process including assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation (APIE) (Bastable & Alt, 2014). Throughout this paper, we will evaluate our use of the educational process by teaching the learner about caffeine.