Teaching and Learning Principles in Nursing
Patients diagnosed with insulin dependent diabetes need to be informed about the disease to enable them cope with its effects in their lives. For instance, patients require to be advised on possible causes of the disease to make sure that they understand what they might have lacked hence acquiring the disease. Teaching patients is aimed at ensuring that they accept their conditions hence being able to cooperate with medical practitioners throughout the treatment procedure. Cooperation is vital for any progress to be attained when dealing with patients (Bastable, 2003). This means that patients need to be counseled to accept that diseases occur normally, and they should not give up in life but rather focus on defeating the disease.
This case is delicate because it involves patients of different genders and different ages. This makes it difficult to teach them at the same time because their understanding and reasoning tend to differ. This means that the ten should have separate teaching session from the thirty five year old man. This means that nurses should ensure that they handle each case separately in order to attain their set goals. For instance, the young girl may be taught with the aid of toys such as teddy bears to ensure that her attention is kept at maximum. According to jean Piagets theories, children should be handled with care due to their maturation nature which influences there understanding. He argues that children are not able to understand things in certain ways at certain points of their lives. Therefore, educators should make use of simplified method to ensure that children understand all what they are subjected to in their teachings. A mature man cannot tolerate scenarios where teddy bears are used to demonstrate to him anything. The man may feel ashamed hence quitting the teaching process. This ends up being un beneficial for both the patient and the nurses because no one achieves the expected goals. On the other hand, the girl can have difficulties in understanding what is written in pamphlet used to teach the old man. This means that age must be considered when designing methods of educating patients. Eriksons theory of psychosocial development should be used to guide medics on teaching patients. This is because Erickson believed that egos can be developed under all means because even conflicts can act as turning points of events in developments. Medical practitioners should ensure that patients acquire competence as argued in Ericksons theories that competence motivates people.
In order to achieve teaching objectives, nurses must develop proper plans to ensure that they communicate with the patients effectively. This means that they should use strategies similar to those used in schools for the young girl. They can use toys used by girls such as teddy bears to help the girl understand how she should handle herself. In cases where the girl may be required to to contain glucose levels, teddy bears can be used to demonstrate to the girl on how to inject herself. This is vital because she might not have people around all the time to help her. In addition, her relatives may be allowed to accompany her during teachings sessions in order to get necessary knowledge regarding the disease (Davis, Tschudin and De Raeve, 2006). Since the girl is approaching adolescence when a lot of body changes happen, she must be given information on how to contain diabetes in line with other changes in her body. This ensures that the girl copes well with adolescence life, as well as containing diabetes.
The thirty five years old man just needs to be involved in handling the disease because his level of understanding is quite high. This means that doctors and nurses do not have to take a lot of time explaining to him about diabetes. He should be involved in constructive dialogues aimed at ensuring that he gets information on how to have the right diet. It is necessary to give him necessary information regarding the disease and methods of handling it. This means that he has to be informed on what is expected of people in his condition. For instance, nurses may be concerned about the use of cigarettes and alcohol in order advice the man accordingly. Unlike the girl, this man may be involved in activities that may worsen his condition hence calling for doctors to warn him in advance. For instance, he may be using substances that the girl does not even know, and this is the reason why they should be taught in separate platforms.
In both cases, nurses should use a teaching strategy where they involve the patient in discussions. This makes sure that the nurse explains to patients everything clearly with the aim of helping them contain the disease. This strategy is highly effective because face to face discussions enable one to be open hence giving useful information to medical practitioners. Patients develop courage to share their fears with nurses, and this gives an opportunity for encouraging them by giving pertinent information on how to maintain diabetes. This strategy makes work easy for medical practitioners because they evaluate patients to know their strengths and weaknesses. In addition, they let the patients know about other conditions related with diabetes. This knowledge is passed to patients perfectly when they are discussing their conditions with health workers. In most cases, patients accept complications related to diabetes even before they occur to them due to teachings they get from nurses and other medical practitioners.
Learning may be hindered by several factors, which may include illiteracy and negligence. This is where patients may lack adequate knowledge to understand biological and medical terms used to describe the disease and its treatment. In many cases, patients may be unable to connect what they are taught hence making the process immensely hectic. Furthermore, some patients may lose hope due to their conditions hence making it hard for medical practitioners to educate them on how to handle diabetes. Culture may also pose an obstacle in teaching patients about diabetes. This happens where communities have beliefs and taboos concerning various diseases. For instance, communities may associate diseases such as diabetes with punishments from their ancestors for wrongs done by the patient. In such cases, patients can never be convinced that guidance offered by medics can contain their disease. As a result, they stop cooperating with nurses leading to difficulties in conducting learning among patients. Nurses should have agreements with patients on the times they feel that they want to be attending teaching sessions (Miller, 2009). Therefore, each patient has to be consulted before fixing time for them because it may contradict their schedules. In case of contradiction, chances of patients failing to show up for learning may be high.
Learners should be assessed once in a while to show how much they learn about their conditions. For instance, medics can decide to ask patients questions regarding what they have discussed. This may involve demonstrations of whatever they have been taught, and this helps medical practitioners to know whether their patients are learning or not. For example, they should make sure patients understand how to control their nutrition hence developing skills on management of diabetes. In addition, they need to understand how to check their glucose levels in order to notify nurses when glucose levels require attention.
