The Responsibilities of Nurses When Providing Patient Education

Patient education is a process of providing patients and their families with information, knowledge and skills that are necessary for the management of their health and illness concerns (Park, 2005). It is the responsibility of nurses to follow the teaching process when providing patient education. They includes assessing the patient educational needs, planning an educational session, implementing the plan, and evaluating the educational process. Obstacles to teaching and learning are those that confront nurses in the educational process. Nurses can find that they don’t have enough time, knowledge, and teaching skills. In addition, patients’ literary level, and environment and personal conditions will affect their ability to learn. Cognitive and humanistic are two learning theories that can help nurses and patients to achieve the goals and benefits of the patient education.

The Responsibilities of the Nurse When Providing Patient Education

Responsibilities of nurses in patient education are helping patients learn health-related behaviors to achieve the goal of optimal health and independence in self-care. It is also the responsibility of the nurse to assess the patients’ learning needs, readiness to learn, and learning styles. Needs and problems of individual patient and family are very important (Wingard, 2005). Some patients need information to understand more about their health condition and how to overcome or prevent the complication of disease. The others may interest in improving quality of life with current diseases. Patients’ problems include patients’ culture, race, ethnicicy, religious orientation, socioeconomic status, age, gender, educational background, literacy level, and emotional state (Wingard, 2005). Next, nurs...

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...This theory is useful because it focuses on the learners or patients’ perceptions, desires, and decision making. It works well with all patients since nurses take patients’ needs and feelings into consideration when giving information.

Conclusion

Together with the patient care, patient teaching is also important to increase patient satisfaction, ensure continuity of care, promote patient’s compliance to the treatment and care plan. Nurses have responsibilities to assess patients’ educational needs to design an appropriate plan and interventions. Overcoming the existing obstacles in teaching and patient’s learning ability will bring about the success of a patient education. The application of cognitive and humanistic learning theories will help health care professionals in general, or nurses in particularly to reach the predefined goals of the teaching process.