Nurses interact with different people from all walks of life while discharging their duties in healthcare provision. These people include patients, patients’ relatives, and fellow healthcare professionals. All these groups of people depict varied behavior and attitudes hence the need to handle them differently. Managing them takes more than clinical professional training and consequently calls for knowledge of psychology that studies the behavior and mental processes of people (Niven, 2006). The healing and recovery of patients is not only dependent on the medical treatment but also on the psychological state of their mind, that is, the view they hold about their ailment and those taking care of them. Nurses frequently handle patients who suffer from different diseases, and psychology helps them understand the patients’ attitudes and behavior, which bears a great impact on their healing and recovery from various illnesses. Both the practicing nurses and those undergoing training to become nurses should, therefore, strive to acquire and uphold psychological insights in multiple areas, as this contributes to the elevation of their job efficacy (Niven, 2006). Psychological knowledge and skills have invaluable application in the field of nursing as it enhances the efficacy of nurses in their lines of duty.
Cognitive Psychology and Nursing
Nurses play an important role in the daily management and monitoring of changes in a patient’s clinical condition, a role that is directed at delivering high-quality medical service to them. To achieve the goals of care management nurses are required to detect these clinical changes in time and intervene in case the changes are worsening the clinical condition of the patient (Niven, 2006). The detection of the clinical changes and initiation of an intervention requires psychomotor and special skills that encompass a complex thinking process such as information synthesis and drawing of inferences that informs the choice of an appropriate course of action. In spite of such an involving role, nurses experience many detractions in their work environment that, if not adequately handled, can hamper their patients’ surveillance role. The detraction emanates from the high number of patients that they handle in an unpredictable environment characterized by unreliability in access to information and resources that complicates their ability to reason clinically and to make appropriate clinical decisions (Niven, 2006). Under such situations, nurses are required to apply cognitive psychology knowledge, which helps them withstand the detraction without adversely affecting their roles in taking care of the patients. Cognitive psychological knowledge helps nurses to organize and reorganize their priorities in the face of environmental detractions in their work environment by focusing their minds on their core duty.
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Clinical Psychology and Nursing
The nursing profession involves interaction with different types of patients in the course of duty. Patients with mental illness, for instance, require special handling skills that nurses can only obtain from psychological knowledge. Niven, 2006). Clinical psychology knowledge confers to nurses the required skills of taking care of the mentally challenged people in the society by way of treatment to transform their condition back to normal. Besides the provision of mental illness therapy, clinical psychological knowledge helps nurses to provide behavioral counseling to the populations they serve. This is because it impacts nursing skills pertaining to the effective handling of emotional and behavioral disorders as regards prevention, diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of various complicated human problems.
Knowledge in clinical psychology broadens the nurse’s work scope in the healthcare affiliated fields, thereby allowing their participation in activities related to the nursing profession within and without the nursing field. Nurses with clinical psychology knowledge are rendered capable of participating in scientific researches, program development and evaluation, public policy implementation, consultation programs, and teaching forums, among others (Niven, 2006). The application of research skills in the execution of their duties makes nurses with clinical psychological knowledge invaluable in the healthcare provision field.
Health Psychology and Nursing
The nursing profession encompasses the understanding of a wide range of issues that affects the recovery of patients from different diseases. Nurses should exhibit a greater understanding of the suffering of patients from chronic pains to serious illnesses and should always aspire to help populations in improving their life qualities by addressing health issues that affect them in their work environment (Niven, 2006). In order to perform all these duties, nurses need to go beyond their medical health skills acquired in training and incorporate some aspects of health psychology. Health psychology knowledge confers to a nurse the ability to understand how behavioral, psychological, and cultural factors influence illnesses and physical health. Nurses are charged with the responsibility of managing and monitoring the progress of patients’ clinical condition progress and should, therefore, not only limit their duties to the medical treatment of a patient alone but should also administer psychological treatment (Niven, 2006). In this, they should compassionately handle them by giving them hope in life since hope makes patients view life with some sense of positivity. Medical treatment without hope and positivity on a patient affects the recovery of a patient from illnesses, and the two should be offered together. Nurses should thus incorporate their medical practice with psychological knowledge for the efficient delivery of healthcare services in their places of work.
The nursing profession involves interaction with different people in society as well as varied health problems that need to be handled using different approaches: medical therapies and counseling therapies. Medical therapies are used to handle health problems that require medical treatment using clinical knowledge. Counseling therapies, on the other hand, apply to psychological treatment administered to people suffering from ailments that border largely on mental and behavioral causes (Niven, 2006). To efficiently handle them, a nurse typically requires incorporating psychological knowledge in the treatment session in order to coax them into adopting healthy ways of life. Counseling therapy is used to reduce stress, manage weight, cease tobacco smoking, improve nutrition, manage sexual behaviors, and to prevent and understand the effects of illnesses.
Industrial Psychology and Nursing
The interaction of nurses is not limited to the community and patients only but also includes their interaction with other professionals in their working place whom they work together with to provide the best health care to their patients. There is a need, therefore, for nurses to understand the behavior and action in particular situations in order to know how best to interact with them effectively (Niven, 2006). The behavior and actions of other workers affect the service delivery efficiency of nurses if not properly taken care of using industrial and occupational psychological skills that help them navigate through the challenges without hampering service delivery. Industrial psychology confers to nurses the organizational skills that help them focus on their job when faced with challenges at their workplaces from fellow healthcare workers.
Nurses are bound to change working places either under normal transfer of employees or to seek a new workstation that satisfies their interests. When one successfully transfers from one job to another, productivity declines as one adjusts to a new work environment (Niven, 2006). The transitional decline of productivity is occasioned by the encounter with new work colleagues who behave differently. Knowledge of industrial psychology helps nurses to learn and get used to the new behavior and actions of other employees in the new work environment. Training in industrial psychology plays a vital role in imparting into nurses’ skills that help them adapt to the new work environment during the job transitioning period. Nursing also involves engagement in teamwork with other healthcare workers, a situation that requires one to possess a high degree of organizational skills and productive behavior to fit into a serious team and contribute to the ultimate success of the team’s activities (Niven, 2006). The industrious skills necessary for productive involvement in a serious work team are fostered with the knowledge of industrial psychology that imparts into a nurse’s productive behavior for successful participation in different activities in the healthcare field.
Social Psychology and Nursing
The nursing profession involves the treatment of patients who suffer from different causes, some of which emanate from social problems caused by socio-psychological challenges experienced in society (Niven, 2006). The modern society is full of socio-psychological disorders such as stress, anxiety, phobia, depression psychosis, schizophrenia, and personality illnesses. All these have been attributed to social problems such as the death of people close to the patients, loss of jobs unexpectedly, weak family relationships, issues about marriage adjustments, breakups, and burden of work, among others. These social challenges lead to the development of mental illnesses characterized by people developing criminal behaviors, emotional disturbances, mental retardation, and drug and substance abuse, which bears grave consequences on physical health. Social psychological knowledge helps nurses to accurately diagnose and offer effective treatment to disorders that emanate from socio-psychological problems and challenges (Niven, 2006). Social psychology imparts into nurses’ skills that they use to explore the various social causes of mental illness presented before them and to administer the appropriate remedying therapy to the patient. Besides the medical therapy, they also administer psychological therapy that entails counseling of the patients to change their social lifestyles that are responsible for the mental disorder.
Social psychology knowledge enhances the ability of the nurse to relate well with the community in which they work. Different communities ascribe to different cultures, which in turn hold diverse views on medical treatment. To cope with them, a nurse requires skills that can enable them to learn about foreign cultures and integrate their values in their practice (Niven, 2006). Social psychology provides nurses with skills that enable them to build a good rapport with the community, thereby making their work easy. Acculturing helps nurses to survive in foreign work environments, an area that requires tolerance and appreciation of new cultures and integration into their way of life.
Forensic psychology and nursing
Nurses encounter diverse groups of patients requiring different types of attention. Patients who have suffered from traumatic experience require forensic care which whose skills are gained from forensic psychology training. Forensic patients suffer double stigmatization that of mental illness and offending behavior, thus requires special handling by nurses who help them recover both medically and psychologically (Niven, 2006). Through forensic psychology knowledge, nurses are able to offer counseling services to patients and their families. Some of these patients suffer from embarrassing traumatizing experiences, such as rape. Patients who recover from such cases as rape face a lot of difficulties in getting integrated back into society and, at times, even in their families. This follows that people who undergo such ordeals are viewed differently in society, a situation that makes their families and the society at large hesitant about welcoming them back (Niven, 2006). As a nurse with adequate forensic psychology knowledge, one ought to counsel both the patient and their families to the admission of the situation and ensure that the patient is admitted back and integrated well in the society.
Nurses who handle forensic patients are at times required to participate in the investigation processes of an offense committed. To participate efficiently in the investigations, a nurse should have a background knowledge of forensic psychology that can enable them to assess the traumatic nature of the patient at the center of the inquiry. Forensic investigators often require a forensic report on the extent of trauma a forensic patient is subjected to as a result of exposure to a traumatizing experience (Niven, 2006). For a nurse to make such a report, he/she must have forensic psychology skills that facilitate the assessment of the extent of trauma on a patient, thereby helping in the forensic investigation process.
Developmental Psychology and Nursing
Nurses handle patients who are in varying stages of development in their lives who require different handling techniques. The central attributes of nursing personnel are compassion and understanding, which nurses use to efficiently care for patients as they manage and monitor the changes in the clinical condition of patients (Niven, 2006). These attributes help them to care for patients of varying ages efficiently while incorporating skills that border on developmental psychology. The ages of patients define the developmental stage in which the patient is. Each developmental stage requires unique attention from the nurse, and hence knowledge on developmental psychology is very important to any nursing professional. Developmental psychology enables nurses to understand how people live and progress and the kind of care they require at each stage of their development. They then organize and reorganize their strategies of healthcare service delivery to patients (Niven, 2006). This follows the fact that people of different ages respond to a certain mode of healthcare service delivery differently; hence nurses require to align their mode of healthcare to the needs of the different age requirements.
Developmental psychology knowledge guides the relationship and interaction with patients as nurses discharge their duties. A careful study and assessment of the developmental stages of different patients enable them to understand their behavior and reactions towards certain situations, thereby giving them insights on how best to handle them under such circumstances (Niven, 2006). Adolescent patients, for instance, react and behave differently from the elderly when subjected to the same model of care. The adolescent patients can withstand some level of pain that the elderly find difficult to endure, and a nurse should be able to understand the difference to create a good relationship with the patient (Niven, 2006). A healthy nursing relationship with the patient is highly necessary for the recovery of a patient from certain illnesses. It is established when nurse masters and puts to practice developmental psychology knowledge while handling patients belonging to different developmental stages.
Educational Psychology and Nursing
The nursing profession involves dealing with patients of varying levels of literacy, which in turn impacts greatly on the ability of the patients to take and follow medical instructions. Nurses find it palatable to take care of literate people as they are capable of easily taking instructions, and they also exhibit a high degree of understanding (Niven, 2006). They, however, find it difficult working with the illiterate class of patients who do not take instructions easily and whose level of understanding is relatively low. Educational psychology knowledge thus helps nurses to deliver healthcare efficiently to this type of patient population. Through the experience of educational psychology, nurses can devise ways of making this group of patients follow medical instructions for effective service delivery (Niven, 2006). Nurses, for instance, can make them follow the drug administration schedule by developing a way in which they can memorize the drug administration instructions or can alternatively make visits to ensure that they follow medical instructions as prescribed by the physicians.
Nursing jobs are not exclusively confined within the provision of healthcare to patients only but can always involve activities that cross this boundary. Nurses can always participate in educative forums such as, in the creation of awareness about particular emerging health issues and the sensitization of populations on important health activities (Niven, 2006). In order to participate efficiently in such educative fora, nurses require educational psychology insights that enable them to deliver intended messages and cause the required impact effectively. Educational psychology makes nurses competitive potential healthcare educators not only in educational forums but also during counseling sessions of patients under their care.
Biopsychology and Nursing
Biopsychology deals with how biology influences thoughts, behavior, and feelings; that is, how biological processes interact with cognitions and emotions to bring about behavioral change in humans (Niven, 2006). Nurses require such knowledge to properly handle patients who are suffering from disorders that emanate from the psychological effect of the various biological processes that they undergo. Biopsychology imparts into nurses’ skills that enable them to interact well with patients whose biological processes are affecting their emotions and treatment process. The skills enable nurses to know the right time and the right way to attend to different patients, given their biological conditions (Niven, 2006). Nurses will, for instance, know how to handle pregnant women compassionately while encouraging them to bear with their condition despite the tiresome task and even stand their rudeness because they understand the psychological connection between the pregnancy and their emotions and behavior.
Bio psychological knowledge does not guide the relationship between nurses and their patients only but also applies to the interaction with colleague healthcare professionals working with them in the same environment (Niven, 2006). The biopsychological knowledge helps nurses to understand the emotional changes that occur on fellow workmates as a result of the biological processes taking place in their bodies. Through this, they can outlive the detractions that may arise due the emotional changes such as mood swings at the place of work that may hamper their healthcare service delivery (Niven, 2006). Biopsychological knowledge is, therefore, crucial in defining the relationship between the nurses, patients, and fellow healthcare workers for effective healthcare service delivery.
Conclusion
The nursing profession has the full application of psychological knowledge in the effective delivery of healthcare services to patients. Patients’ psychology has great bearing on their recovery from diseases for which they are under medication. Nurses play an important role in managing and monitoring the clinical changes in patients who are under medication; hence they equally play a significant part in the recuperation of the patients. Nurses require strong psychological attributes in order to handle patients efficiently and contribute to their recovery. Psychological knowledge in different areas of psychology help in guiding the relationship between patients and nurses in a way that enhances their healthcare service delivery, thereby helping in the recovery of the patients. Nurses get to understand the patients’ psychology through the combined medical and psychological insights that they obtain during training and which helps them establish a healthy relationship with the patients bordered on efficient healthcare provision. The psychological knowledge also helps guide the relationship between the nurses and the other professionals with whom they work together to better the lives of the patients. Psychological knowledge, therefore, is vital in the nursing profession, and every nurse should grasp a piece of it for efficient healthcare services delivery to communities.
Reference
Niven, N. (2006). The psychology of nursing care .
