NURSE PARTICIPATION IN PATIENT EDUCATION IN A COMMUNITY HOSPITAL.
Contributors: Florida State University.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 354
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: The purpose of this research was to discover concepts and hypotheses related to nurse participation in patient education at the bedside. Naturalistic inquiry was used to explore patient education practices in one community hospital in South Florida. For nine months the researcher worked alongside nurses in the process of conducting fieldwork. Ethnographic methods of participant observation, informant interviewing, document analysis, and journal writing amassed a body of descriptions from which a theoretical model of the dynamics of nurse participation in patient education took form.

The emergent model is a comprehensive, hypothetical framework that includes four sets of variables: (1) Situational variables, including physical (fixtures, messages, and educational resources) and social (patients, doctors, peers, and management). (2) Intrapersonal variables, composing a hypothetical profile of the nurse as defined by the presence of three extremes of contrast (task versus process orientation, role clarity versus role ambiguity, and patient dependence versus patient independence). (3) Valuational variables, operationalized as nurse perceptions of the value of content to doctors and to patients. (4) Participatory variables, defined by four alternative roles (initiator, teacher, reinforcer, and facilitator).

Early in the research it became apparent that patient education is not a singular phenomenon but a complex of roles that nurses assume in helping patients learn. The emergence of a model, built incrementally from data derived from practice, serves as a tool for the development of theoretical hypotheses and research questions too numerous to state in a single study. More than forty hypotheses which have implications for both decision-making in practice (including legal, economic, and academic concerns) and the advancement of theory are given.

Important areas for future study include the development of measurement instruments for the above-mentioned sets of variables, verification of the hypotheses set forth, and testing of the model as a decision-making and theory-building tool.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-12, Section: B, page: 3532.

Thesis (ED.D.)--THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1987.

School code: 0071.