I think that a big part of the nursing profession is teaching. Almost all nurses provide teaching as part of their job. As a psychiatric nurse, I do teaching all the time with patients. This could be teaching regarding the medications that have been prescribed to them, teaching about their diagnosis, teaching about diet and exercise and teaching about stress management. We also do teaching on medical issues such as diabetic teaching and various other disease management. We also do teaching in the way of groups that are run at the state hospital where I work. Nurses run several of the groups. These groups can be things such as skills training, wellness groups, smoking cessation groups or psychoeducational groups. While usually the clinicians run the therapy groups, the nurses are sometimes asked to fill-in this role also. While it is not officially "teaching" the nurses are also the front-line staff that are around when we have patients that are escalating or needing to talk to a staff when they are having a hard time. It is often the nursing staff that sit and problem-solve with patients and help them to use their coping skills that they are learning in their therapy groups. I think this is also an important "teaching" role in that we provide support and care for patients by role-modeling good coping and appropriate interactions with others. I do not think that there is a health care professional role that does not involve teaching in some aspect. Just the nature of being a healthcare professional means being around the patients and be helping them when they are sick or needing assistance in some way. There are endless teaching moments that happen day to day, even if they are small ones.
Stephanie -
ReplyDeleteGood points and nice job on your blog. You raise a good point that it's often RNs who assist patients with coping and problem-solving, these needs often require a lot of teaching (makes me think of careplans).