PATIENT FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE NURSES' SELECTION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGY.
Contributors: University of Colorado, Boulder.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 222
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This exploratory study sought to determine if subjects' choice of patient teaching strategies (advising, behavioral, teaching and learning, and problem solving) in each of four simulated illness situations would agree with the choice of experts and whether the use of patient cues differed between subjects agreeing with the experts and those who did not. The subjects were 55 nurses who were practicing in acute medical or surgical areas. The relationship of personological variables to selection of strategy was also explored.

The majority of the subjects selected the same strategy as the experts in all four of the illness situations. Use of patient cues was examined by type of illness and strategy. Although the frequency of use of cues differed, the majority of subjects regardless of agreement with experts, used the same category of cues to arrive at a strategy in a given illness situation.

Of the personological variables studied, only type of nursing education, rank of the nurse, and systematic assignment of saliency values to cues influenced the choice of teaching strategy. Subjects with higher levels of nursing degrees who held administrative rank, and used systematic assignment of saliency value to cues chose the most appropriate strategy more often.

Although the study was exploratory in nature, test of significance were computed on differences between experts and subjects; use of common cue categories by subjects choosing most and less appropriate teaching and learning strategies; and, on relationship of demographic characteristics to choice of most and less appropriate teaching strategies. No findings were deemed statistically significant.

Specific recommendations for nursing include the continued teaching of assessment of patients' content needs, readiness to learn, and to teach assessment of patients' learning style. Recommendations for research include exploration on a qualitative level, the impinging factors that exist in acute care facilities that interfere with nurses' attempts to teach patients, to explore in depth the influence of a variety of patient characteristics on outcomes of learning in order to validate the proposed conceptual framework of this study.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-08, Section: B, page: 2265.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER, 1987.

School code: 0051.