Nursing: Health Education Overview

Overview of Education on Health Care and Change

• It interests nurses in every practice setting, and teaching is a major aspect of the nursing role.
• Good teaching requires adaptability, inventiveness, and creativity.

The Nursing Teacher

• Must evolve and update knowledge/skills in nursing.
• Should have an established system of electric principles and beliefs for guidance.
• Must maintain character and values to serve as an effective role model
• Adaptability is key to understanding student behavior differences.
• Requires the ability to adjust to individual differences to effectively convey knowledge.
• Principles of teaching are essential to adapt methods to student understanding, knowledge, experience, objectives, and content.

Health Education

• It involves providing information and learning experiences to change behavior and improve client health.
• Knowledge acquisition comes through information exchange between the teacher and learner.
• It consists of experiences influencing individual, community, and racial health habits, attitudes, and knowledge.
• Health education increases people's abilities to make informed decisions affecting personal, family, and community wellbeing.
• Nurses provide basic information for health promotion, illness prevention, and self-reliance.
• Learning experiences to promote behavior conducive to good health with tools for physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health development.
• Physical health encompasses learning experiences that help promote the body's ability to function
• Emotional health is defined as the ability of an individual to cope with stress and strain as one faces life's realities and challenges.
• Mental health relates to the ability to make correct judgments and sound decisions to cope with daily situations.
• Social health is understood as the ability to relate well with others, regardless of status or position,
• Spiritual health recognizes the supernatural aspect of divine healing and an individual's communion with their creator.

Key Aspects of Health Education Process

• A planned opportunity based on specific goals, objectives, activities, and evaluation in a specific setting.
• A program introducing concepts at appropriate levels.
• Based on prior learning to inform future content.
• Emphasizes interrelated health aspects and life quality.
• Interaction between qualified educator and learner.

Health Educators

• Plan/conduct teachings to raise health awareness.
• Aids in skill development for health promotion/maintenance through acquired and applied concepts.
• They also develop/discuss health opinions, and formulate sound decision-making.

Purposes of Health Education

• It is more than information dissemination on health practices and treatment for the society, like:
• Propagating health promotion and disease prevention, interrelating mental, emotional, social and physical health to reduce risks
• It considers lifestyle, family history, and risk factors for disease prevention.
• Involves family and peers.
• Explains the relationship between positive health behavior and prevention of injury, illness, premature death.
• Analyzes education and technology's influence on health problem prevention/control in all healthcare areas.
• Explains the impact of personal health behaviors on the body.
• It is aligned with government regulations influence of public health and social policies on health promotion, plus disease prevention at individual, familial and community levels
• Used to modify or continue health behaviors, and determine self-reliance and responsibility for health improvement.
• It is designed for health maintenance and risk reduction strategies, also identifying behavior consequences and improving health.
• Provides info on injury prevention/management for potential health problems, demonstrating ways of avoiding/reducing threatening situations.
• It provides health information, products, and services.
• Demonstrates ability to evaluate resources.
• Demonstrates roles/responsibilities community health care.
• Assess the cost and availability of health care services
• Analyze professional healthcare requirements.
• Emphasizes good health habits/practices as part of culture, media, and technology to evaluate cultural influences.
• Analyzes info to facilitate community understanding/compliance to self-reliant taught behavior.
• Helps to communicate needs/wants/feelings needed resolve health conflicts by communicating care, consideration, and respect.

Forms of Advocacy

• Through analyzing conflict causes and forming interpersonal conflict resolution minus harming oneself or others.
• Evaluate method effectiveness to express health ideas correctly, conveying valid information re: health issues.
• Working cooperatively to advocate health.
• Use effective communication techniques to influence positive health choices.
• Employ strategies to overcome barriers discussing health information.

Types of Health Education

• Addresses Information about human biology and hygiene.
• Health services guide individual use of resources.
• Health choices consider national, regional, and local policies.

Dimensions of the Health Education Process

• Include eclectic knowledge, skills, and values.
• The educative process dimensions are curricular, methodological, environmental, and human relations.
  • Curricular dimension includes the subject matter.
  • Methodological dimension deals with teaching strategies and learner activities.
  • Environmental dimension encompasses physical and social factors
  • Human relations include interactions influencing the learning process.

Aspects of Health Education

• Involves behavioral sciences, incorporating psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology.
• Behavioral sciences define behavior determinants, such as psychological predispositions, environmental reinforcement, and socio-cultural context and these are behavioral determinants
• Leverages public health and statistics for epidemiological data.
• Determinants of health like environment, medical care, and lifestyle are found in public health.
• Is an important factor for study and practice in pedagogy, andragogy, and curriculum development

Importance of Health Education

• Enhancing knowledge awareness.
• Promoting health, safety, and security and environmental sanitation.
• Developing and improving community resources.
• Increasing productivity and character strength.
• Preventing disease through awareness.
• Minimizing cost via awareness.
• Promoting self-reliant behavior and healthy attitudes.

The Change Process

• Change is continuous reevaluation to meet evolving needs.
• School administrators/educators familiarize with trends in nursing/teaching, by providing effective ways that will equip learners.
• Teachers and students assess the need for change and modify obsolete knowledge.
• Initiate group interaction where critical thinking of nursing situations builds problem-solving frameworks that identify forces, state problems, identify constraints, list strategies, select best ones, formulate, and then evaluate changes.

Managing Change

• Thinking-Practice strategy where learners are rational beings operating based on beliefs and interests.
• Interest and Commitment strategy assumes that learners constantly act consistently.
• Power and Self Discipline strategy involves compliance.

Factors Affecting Change

• Culture determines values influencing change.
• Demographics considers age, gender, heredity, and environment.
• Socio-economic conditions and environmental circumstances impact quality and quantity of responses to change.
• State of wellness/development influences physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual health

Change and Filipino Health Values

• The Philippines exemplifies how large-scale change influences the health system.
• Medical health remedies used consist of:
  • Home remedies through oils, ointments, and measures for comfort.
  • Traditional healing techniques through herbal medicines.
  • Supernatural healing via faith healers using a holistic approach.
  • Regulated drugs through doctor prescriptions.
  • Over-the-counter drugs without prescriptions.

Concepts of Teaching and Learning

• It is an act of imparting knowledge through sharing, explaining, clarifying and synthesizing of content of the learning process.
• It comprises a body of knowledge and research findings, and is intended to form expected individual behavior.
• It must also supply adequate opportunities for individuals to demonstrate which can be valuable throughout their lives and contribute to the development of a peaceful and just society
• Defined as a sense of being physically fit, mentally stable and socially comfortable.
• More than just not being sick.
• Ability to perform expected tasks.
• Is the acquisition of knowledge, habits, attitudes, and skills to create change which is continuous throughout life.
• Is where nurses apply the principles of learning to change behavior and facilitate responsible decisions about health.

Education Process is Systematic

• Providing the nurse educator with information on the learners’ knowledge and skills needing to transfer efficiently.
• Gathering learner profile data to identify teaching strategies.
• Has a carefully organized written presentation learners' needs, how nurse educators initiate teaching.
• Implementation involves a point for the theoretical and practical joining as the teacher applies the plan.
• A measurement of both teacher and learner performances.

Comparing the Education and Nursing Processes

• Both the education and nursing processes have similar components as assessment, planning, implementation then evaluation but differ in terms of focus.
• The nursing process plans/implements care according to client needs, whereas the education process prioritizes teaching.

Assessing the Learner

• A critical step but often neglected element for instructional design needs to recognize scope, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of nurse's assessment
• Need for learning the approaches to be used in designing learning experiences.
• This includes recognizing a knowledge gap and a need for learning new information to either have skill or attitude

Steps for Assessing Learning Needs

• Identifying the learner, then setting the right setting and the right amount of data to collect to involve members of the healthcare team.
• Assessing existing resources, time-management issues, organizational demands, informal conversations, structured interviews, focus groups that follow some surveys, tests, observations and analysis of patient charts
• Is defined as when the learner is receptive to learning something, can depend on such things as physical, emotional, experiential state, personal knowledge base, and learning styles
• Can be visual, hands-on, concrete, and reflective to allow students to learn better.

Kolb's Four Basic Learning Styles:

• Divergers learn from different perspectives (concrete experience, reflective observations)
• Assimilators learn concisely and logically (abstract conceptualization and reflective observations)
• Convergers focused practically on problems, preferring technical tasks. These allow specialization technologically and is good at experimenting
• Accommodators take more of a hands-on approach that relies on intuition as opposed to logic where they are interested in new and exciting experiences

Developing a Health Education Plan

• Helps organize education sessions and their relation to the development of the learner indicating what tasks a learner should next perform
• Guiding the nurse on her learning activities for the day.
• Contains the desired outcomes based on student and their desired behaviors
• Its organization must relate in each class the previous work of the course
• Providing for knowledge and material selection

Effective Teaching Methods

• Have to be considered effective if learners are able to not only develop but their increase their performance, as well as decrease studying time itself
• Need to set up the audience level, as well as focus on a particular topic with outlines covering key points.
• Use clear, simplified presentations, then organize points clearly with appropriate illustrations as well as varying issues to consider different perspectives.
• Must be enthusiastic for the specific topic itself for the audience as well as record and present important information and be aware of the audience and their own personal words

Objectives of the Education Process include:

• Learning outcomes and curriculum units and their guidelines, instructional practices as well as a change in the patients behaviors or what they have said through such actions
• Outcomes achieved through teaching learning, such as creating something that describes the ideal ultimate state for the process that is meant to be broad to be measured for its achievement.
• Should be able to describe the testing environment along with who is to be performing, and how well the learner

The taxonomy of objectives can depend on the category where either:

• Cognition is meant for thinking
• The affects to feeling
• Psychomotor to skills
• Has goals to be specific, measurable, achievable as well as when they are met to be realistic and timely

Instructional Methods

• Lectures should be a structured method where teachers both verbally and directionally transmit information to learners to allow to process information as a group to share
• Having learners communicate information, to not only themselves, but with other parties as well as deliver specific help from information being gained
• Allows for direct viewing as the demonstrator showcases what can be taught as well as gives the other students a chance to be evaluated for what they know through a return demo that is needed.
• Can require something to be participated or simulated through specific rules

The Instructional Materials require three components

• Systems of either delivery, with a presentation of its content and materials or even audiovisual types of lessons to increase their learning

Approaching Teaching Skills

• Independent with a teacher that can both stimulate self learning while still meeting the needs and requirements
• Demonstrations to assist to show how to do it