Nurse as a Teacher Health Care

Question: Choose a factor that affects patient learning that you anticipate seeing in your professional career. Discuss how you will develop a teaching plan to meet the learning needs of your patient. Answer: Factor Affecting Patients Learning Patient education is a significant component of providing healthcare. The role of the nurses becomes critical as they are in constant contact with the patient and they are the ones that provide learning to the patients. However there are factors that affect the learning of the patient, which create issues in the recovery. One such factor is the lack of ideal conditions in providing health care information. Interference in the information inputs results in the decrease in the information flow and recall by the patient. This includes lack of time on the part of the nurse, interruptions and the change of duties of the nurse on a frequent basis. Use of medical terminologies to a layman is also a factor. The linkage of these factors on the health of the individual is direct. Lack of providing time to the patients on the part of the nurse delays the recovery of the patient, and affects his wellbeing. Research done by Mardanian et al (2004) stated that the nurses top priorities are not alwa ys patients. Infact the study proved that it was the seventh priority in many cases. The satisfaction levels of patients are related to their learning, and studies have stated that even after the discharge proper information is lacking. Nursing care is insufficient to meet the patient satisfaction and has a huge scope for improvement. Teaching Plan to Develop Learning Needs of Patient The first and foremost need is to analyze the teaching requirements and understanding the patients psyche. Nurse should create a plan in which the timing for learning, where the learning process will take place, patient queries, his problems related to health care, learning content should be taken into account. The learning should start from what the patients needs to know about his health or the illness. This will give them required knowledge and understanding for treating the issue in the better manner. Role of Nurse should be to create confidence in the patient by providing him inputs of what he wants to know. The next step can be to provide additional information of what patient does not know, but which might be beneficial for his health improvement (Lombardi et al. 2008). The offer should be to ask the patients of timings that suit him, and even the durations of learning, whether he likes short sessions or longer ones. Sessions should include understanding about the patient health and signs to judge whether he is tired. Understanding the environment in which the patient lives and the personality traits are useful. For better understanding medical jargons should be avoided until unless very necessary. This will engage the patients towards the learning process. Learners can be of various kinds, like Auditory learner, Linear, Tactile or Global Learner. Nurse should understand the category of his patient to create a successful implementation plan of health. The teaching materials should be as per the patient dealt with. It can be through use of DVD, Audio, Brouchers, or Charts. Even the methods can be switched from one to one session to interactive games, demonstrations. References Lombardi, K. S. (2008). For patients, more comfortand a bigger dose ofrespect. The New York Times in the region, Hospitals 12. Mardanian, L., Salahshorian L., Mohammad, A. J.(2004). Master of Science Thesis.Tehran, Iran: University of Medical Sciences. Nurses perception of patient education, enhancing and inhibiting factors on patient teaching.