Patient-Education – It's the Nurse's Job in a Healthcare Facility

With the transformation in healthcare services across the world, there is an emphasis on finer discharge planning and patient engagement. This resulted in making patient education a critical part in medical care industry. 

In present environment, patient education has become an important part in the routine jobs of nurses. However, like any other nursing competencies, educating a patient needs skills that takes time to develop.

For healthcare professionals and nurses, here are some practices that can help in improving and enhancing the skills needed to educate patients -                  

Follow Individualized Approach

The first rule that implies is educating a patient based on his/her individual learning ability, rather than going with patient's medical condition. A nurse needs to assess a patient's psychological and physical readiness to engage in learning.

As a nurse, you may also ask the patient about the personal goal they have set for treatment, giving you a better insight and understanding about their ability to comprehend. 

Nurses can emphasize on learning through hands-on practice and live demonstrations if the patient finds it too complex to deal with medical jargons.

Teach-back Method Works the Best

During patient education, teach-back method works best as it allows you to gauge patient's self-management skills. In teach-back method, there is a two way communication that results in easy understanding of health information. 

Once you are done with teaching or have demonstrated some procedure, you need to ask the patient to explain it again to you in their own words. This will clearly state you if there is any gap in patient's knowledge, so that you can work it out.

Boost your career

If you have a liking and urge for patient education, then you can look for job profiles that allows you to apply your skills to great use. You can seek out a career in home health nursing as their you will get better chance to put your skills in practice as compared to traditional nurses. 

Now, gradually more and more hospitals are also adding up positions wherein nurses can engage in patient education or become post-discharge care and instructor. Nurses can find good option even in pharmaceutical companies to act as patient educators.

INSCOL in collaboration with leading Universities/Colleges in Canada/UK/USA/AUS/NZ offers a wide range of exclusive Nursing Programs in:

Emergency Care, Critical Care, Palliative Care, Coronary Care, Acute Complex Care, Mental Health, Leadership & Management, Gerontology & Chronic Illness, Healthcare & Rehabilitation and BSc/MSc Nursing.

For more information: http://www.canada.inscolacademy.com/academic-courses/