Over the past years, community health teaching has become an integral part of the nursing responsibilities paradigm. However, while the modern health organization system acknowledges the duty to secure efficient teaching, little has been made to develop a full-scale educational program to prepare nurses for proper interventions. As a result, an overwhelming part of the current patient teaching within the setting depends on the nurses’ initiative rather than a well-established state curriculum. In order to understand the current environment of patient teaching, it is necessary to communicate with nurses with explicit experience in the field and practice in creating a teaching session for a certain patient group.
The target population concerned soon-to-be discharged stroke survivors within the acute rehabilitation facility in Hollywood, FL. The present paper addresses some of the highlights of the teaching process, including the teaching plan summary, strengths and weaknesses, reflection, and evaluation of the intervention.
Summary of the Teaching Plan
The teaching session selected for the current experience addressed the process of pre-discharge communication with patients who undergo acute rehabilitation therapy in order for them to feel less frustrated during readjustment to a non-inclusive environment. After communication with the admission nurse in an acute rehabilitation facility, it has become evident that readmission with severe health issues is dangerously common among stroke survivors. Readmissions mostly happen because they do not have enough care outside the hospital premises due to the inability to access support resources or severe mental issues that undermine the desire to recover.
Thus, a primary objective of a teaching plan was to provide post-stroke patients with recommendations on maintaining health outside the acute rehabilitation facility and define the sources to address in case of health deterioration at home. The plan itself consisted of three parts that concerned the notions of self-actualization, recommendations on recovery, and post-stroke support resources. The first part primarily concerned patients’ ability to assess their current health in order to plan recovery in the long-term perspective. Such a skill would help the patients seek assistance and health support in a timely manner outside the rehabilitation premises. During this stage of the teaching plan, the nurse provides patients with a blueprint of self-assessment tools and assists them during the evaluation process.
The second part of the teaching plan comprised the outline of recommendations on how to maintain the progress achieved during the rehabilitation. The overall advice was primarily focused on nutrition, avoiding harmful habits, securing day-to-day care, and timely addressing medical assistance. The last part was dedicated to the introduction of care and support resources available in the community for both stroke survivors and caregivers.
Epidemiological Rationale for Topic
Stroke is officially regarded as a leading death cause in the United States. According to the official data, a stroke case is recorded every forty seconds somewhere in the country (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2021). The disease itself is extremely dangerous due to the fact that it has no long-term warning signs, as the symptoms of numbness in the face, arm, and leg, rapidly emerging speech discrepancies, and a loss of balance emerge suddenly during a stroke. This neurological condition results in severe damage in terms of survivors’ coordination, brain function, and mental state.
Consequently, stroke survivors require acute rehabilitation, which encompasses physical, speech-language, psychiatric, and occupational therapy. After an extensive rehabilitation process, patients are discharged from hospital facilities, yet they are not fully recovered, as this process requires months and years to be complete. According to the researchers, at-home stroke rehabilitation comprises formal and informal care (Pucciarelli et al., 2019). Formal care is secured by professionals such as nurses and doctors, and it encompasses the conduction of therapy sessions like occupational and physical therapy. Informal care, in its turn, concerns the process of taking care of the patient in terms of activities of daily living (ADLs), and it could be provided by both home-workers and family members.
However, despite the already existing system of post-rehabilitation care, the readmission rates remain unprecedentedly high among the survivors. The researchers assume that such regularity highly depends on the discrepancy between the patient’s needs and their actual ability to access the care required for rehabilitation (Daras et al., 2021). Moreover, the patients struggle with emotional instability and higher risks of depression and self-doubts concerning rehabilitation and their worth in society. As a result, many stroke survivors abandon their continuous rehabilitation because of financial and social barriers.
Evaluation of Teaching Experience
The process of teaching is an extremely challenging and complex endeavor that requires great dedication to the process and extreme cautiousness in terms of conveying information. Thus, when it comes to teaching patients with special needs and limited ability to receive information, nurses are to obtain exhaustive knowledge on awareness of patient’s sensitive needs. This proficiency comprises relatable knowledge on the matter, high levels of emotional intelligence and compassion, and pedagogical approaches to the process.
When it comes to teaching experience, it would be reasonable to assume that it was one of the most complicated and challenging experiences in terms of nursing practice, as it required extensive knowledge of the disease, along with a proper level of communication with patients. While mentally preparing for the discharge from the facility, patients feel extremely vulnerable when discussing the future, as they feel rather anxious about their present. Thus, the vast majority of patients are not engaged in the conversation about at-home rehabilitation in order to avoid negative thoughts about their future challenges. Thus, the teaching experience indicated the importance of a sensitive relationship with patients and individual communication approaches.
Another significant insight of teaching experience is the importance of listening to patients during a teaching intervention. When informed about their care options outside the hospital, many patients feel like such an explanation relates to general recommendations that are suitable for more financially stable patients.
Thus, when perceiving the teacher-student paradigm, one may analyze it from a “communicator-receiver” perspective, as nurses as communicators have to create the most relevant communicative environment in order to secure accessibility of information. Finally, the process of teaching requires more preparation than it might seem, as the teachers are to respond rapidly to any question voiced by the patients in order to demonstrate expertise. Hence, it may be concluded that teaching experience requires more attention in the professional community, as it is a significant part of a patient’s recovery.
Community Response to Teaching
Stroke survivors and their caregivers could be characterized as a group of people with an extremely high level of anxiety and uncertainty. As a result, they become overwhelmingly sensitive to any information, requiring credible and tolerant sources. However, there are some patients who are looking forward to a soon recovery and thus, eager to engage in the discussion of their potential. The community response was rather controversial in terms of an outcome.
A part of the patients was unwilling to even consider the discussion as a possible situation development. As a result, some of the responses were voiced with irritation, as the recommendations were perceived as a reminder that someone was no longer a person they used to be before the stroke. Another part of the responders was trying to engage with the session flow, but their insecurity limited their ability to believe in the necessity to endure at-home care.
Finally, some of the responders were already aware of some of the options and recommendations, as they had an optimistic mindset towards recovery. Such a diverse reaction to the information justified the hypothesis that patients should spend more time in extensive psychotherapy in order to avoid episodes of severe depression and lack of self-worth due to physical and cognitive limitations. Moreover, in order to avoid such a response, it is vital for nurses to have expertise in the field of emotional intelligence for the sake of expressing compassion and communication with patients on their level of health state without excessive sympathy.
Areas of Strengths and Areas of Improvements
The first and arguably one of the most important areas of strength is exhaustive background research conducted prior to the development of a teaching plan. In such a way, the teaching session was aimed at discussing the most relevant question within the community of post-stroke rehabilitation. Another significant strength of a proposed teaching plan is its relevance in today’s growing stroke prevalence tendency. The third beneficial aspect of such a teaching intervention is the attention drawn to the patient’s self-perception and explicit discussion concerns. The questions raised by the community, along with the list of recommendations, secure a confident first step toward the reduction of readmission cases after stroke.
Undeniably, the teaching experience was also replete with areas for improvement given the fact that it was a relatively new experience in nursing. To begin with, it was extremely challenging to secure accessible and inclusive communication with patients, as the process was different from a conventional nursing intervention, as it implied inquiry-based learning and listening to patients rather than evaluating providing them with tailored “roadmaps.”
Another significant area of improvement concerned the ability to use plain and non-medical terminology in order to convey the information. Frequently, when working with patients, nurses assume their basic knowledge of medical terminology, creating a breach in communication. During the teaching experience, this breach has become even more evident. Thus, it is necessary to practice the ability to explain treatment and rehabilitation phenomena in a comprehensive and non-intimidating way. Finally, enhancing one’s ability to empathize with the learner is also of paramount importance, as a lack of understanding makes learning distant.
Conclusion
Teaching experience is an integral part of nursing professional competence. However, the development of a beneficial teaching curriculum lacks academic attention in terms of its implementation, making nurses’ enthusiasm a driving force of community education. The present paper was aimed at defining the outcomes of the teaching experience. It has been estimated during the analysis that teaching practice depends greatly on interpersonal communication with patients and an empathetic and supporting environment. Moreover, any educational session requires thorough preparation in order to secure the community’s trust and confidence in the recommendations presented.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. (2021). Stroke. Web.
Daras, L. C., Deutsch, A., Ingber, M. J., Hefele, J. G., & Perloff, J. (2021). Inpatient rehabilitation facilities’ hospital readmission rates for Medicare beneficiaries treated following a stroke. Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 28(1), 61-71. Web.
Pucciarelli, G., Ausili, D., Rebora, P., Arisido, M. W., Simeone, S., Alvaro, R., & Vellone, E. (2019). Formal and informal care after stroke: A longitudinal analysis of survivors’ post rehabilitation hospital discharge. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(11), 2495-2505. Web.