NRS 429V Week 1 Discussion Question 1 Assessment Description

NRS 429V Week 1 Discussion Question 1 Assessment Description

Patient education is essential in healthcare. Education can prevent medical conditions, inform patients about procedures and recovery processes, decrease complications from medication and medical devices, reduce patients readmitted to the hospital, change lifestyle patterns and so much more (Arkansas State University, 2018). As nurses, we are essential doing this with everyday care as we talk to our patients about what we are doing and why we are doing things, such as medication, physical therapy, monitoring, ect. A nurse has an immense role in the education of patient’s as they are involved in patient care and can educate in small segments during care to both stimulate the patient to find interest in their care and make discharge education much less dense and overwhelming. Nurses also have great responsibility with education. We do not want our patients to not understand medications they are taking or why they are having a procedure. It is our job to advocate for our patients and we highlight this with education as we involve them in their care. Evidence based practice is what we teach our patients as nurses. One method for teaching patients is interactive teaching strategies. An interactive approach involves an interaction amongst the participants, which in our case, are patients, (Horntvedt, 2018). By having the patient interact and understand why they are taking medication or why they are doing certain care, they are able to better learn and understand. Another great education tool for teaching and learning is the teach back method where the patient explains back the education (Horntvedt, 2018). Behavioral objectives require the willingness of the patient to be involved in learning and changing. These objects however also give the nurse or caregiver a guideline to see if the patient is actually learning and their care plan is effective. The teach back method can also be used as a behavioral objective in highlighting the retained knowledge of our patients and their ability to interact with their care. Overall, education amongst nurses is a vital factor to our roles as healthcare providers.

References:

Arkansas State University. (2018). The Nurse’s Role in Patient Education. https://degree.astate.edu/articles/nursing/nurses-role-patient-education.aspx

Horntvedt, M. (2018) Strategies for teaching evidence-based practice in nursing education: a thematic literature review. BMC Medical Education. https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-018-1278-z