Random Excerpts from NURS 350 Nursing Update

 

Description

The Nursing Update course is designed to help you review and develop your therapeutic communication skills, and your use of the nursing process to manage practice. Theory and practice in assessing clients, planning care for clients and evaluating care for clients in a primary health care way will be provided. The preceptorship experience allows for consolidation and practice of new or renewed concepts. The theory is generic and can be applied in the clinical setting of the student's choice dependent on availability of clinical placement.

Objectives

The Nursing Update course is directed at helping you meet the following outcomes:

·                     Select appropriate communication strategies for enhancing health care relationships.

·                     Conduct the interview process, considering verbal/non-verbal signals and the determinants of health.

·                     Apply principles of documentation, ethics, confidentiality and legal responsibility to health communications, including electronic communication.

·                     Promote and enhance health and well-being through the use of effective communication and decision-making.

·                     Use appropriate methods to collect client data.

·                     Use a systematic approach to perform physical assessments.

·                     Use assessment/diagnosis frameworks to systematically determine the client's nursing diagnosis.

·                     Demonstrate individual responsibility and accountability in nursing assessment.

·                     Demonstrate ability to work cooperatively within the health care team.

·                     Plan nursing care in view of the client's nursing diagnosis, relevant research, and knowledge of general methods of nursing care.

·                     Implement nursing care by performing the required psychomotor skills with expertise that includes guiding principles and specific knowledge.

·                     Implement nursing care by using knowledge of health education, health determinants, change theory, and client populations to help clients to engage in self-care practices.

·                     Evaluate nursing care to determine whether it has achieved the identified results and how it should be modified.

·                     Demonstrate individual responsibility, accountability and continuing competence  in nursing practice.

·                     Demonstrate ability to work cooperatively when providing care as a member of the interdisciplinary health care team.

·                     Practice in a professional, responsible and accountable way in keeping with the Standards of the RNABC, Nurses (Registered) Act, and practice setting.

Learning Activity D1.4a – Electronic Mail

Electronic mail or E-mail is frequently used as a communication technique within the health care system.  E-mail systems are being used quite routinely now within most colleges, universities, health care agencies, community health services, as well as the general population at large. Information shared using an e-mail system is immediate: data, records, files, documents, even books can be addressed to a recipient and received instantly.

1. Read the beginning pages of the chapter on “Electronic Communication” from your Readings file, especially the content related to E-Mail.  
2. Write a paragraph in your learning log to describe how you, personally, could use E-mail in your nursing practice.
3. In the table below, list the advantages and disadvantages of using E-mail. Pay particular attention to the communication pros and cons of this electronic method.

 

E-MAIL
Advantages	Disadvantages

 

Primary health care theory includes or is closely linked to key concepts of:

 

• Health Promotion
• Prevention
• Self-caring
• Health determinants
• Population Health
• Client-centered care
• Empowerment
• Lifestyle
• Health information technology

Topic E1.1 Health Determinants—An Overview

According to the primary health and health promotion theory, factors that influence the promotion and maintenance of health are called determinants of health. They include:

·         Income and Social Status

·         Social Support Networks

·         Education and Literacy

·         Employment and Working Conditions

·         Gender

·         Culture

·         Social Environment

·         Physical Environment

·         Personal Health Practices and Coping Skills

·         Healthy Child Development

·         Biology and Genetic Endowment

·         Health Services

The table below describes the basic conditioning factors that are influencing these needs and appropriate self-care actions for meeting the self-care need.

Self-care Need	Health Determinants	Self-care actions
Maintenance of hydration	Biology: periodic urinary infections; treatment prescribed.	Monitor self for evidence of urinary tract infection. Communicate results to prescribing physician. Consume 2400 mL per day.
Elimination balance and integrity	Biology: has an indwelling catheter.	Catheter care.

 

Learning Activity A2.5 –  Discovering Your Own Learning Styles

 

"We are all able to know the world through language, logical - mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, and an understanding of ourselves and of others. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences - the so-called profile of intelligences - and in the way such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains." (Gardner, 1993).

 

Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard University, hypothesized that people are capable of eight unique ways of information processing. Information processing is the person's preferred intellectual approach to assimilating facts, information, and knowledge.

Gardner suggested that individuals should be encouraged to apply their preferred intelligences in learning. Learners who have an understanding of their own particular learning styles can reflect on how to utilize their learning strengths and cultivate their less dominant ones. A key point in multiple intelligence theory is that most people can develop all eight of the intelligences to a relatively competent level of mastery.

The eight intelligences in Gardner's model are all considered to be cognitive capacities.

 

They include the following:

 

Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence.

Logical - Mathematical Intelligence.

Spatial - Visual Intelligence.

Bodily - Kinaesthetic Intelligence.

Musical Intelligence.

Intrapersonal Intelligence.

Interpersonal Intelligence.

Naturalistic Intelligence