Whether educating patients at the bedside or other clinical environments, nurses are on the front lines of care to assess their patients and to pinpoint the best way to determine how much they already know about their medical condition and educate them about their health. To offset the impact of diseases straining today's US healthcare delivery system, the industry needs more involvement by nurses to ensure patients get the education and guidance they need to navigate their own health choices.
Nurses have the capacity to work at all levels of caregiving, leveraging specialized clinical training to guide and inform decision making. Here are four trends where nurses make an impact in patient education initiatives — from helping to slow disease progression to providing more direct patient care, advancing patient education in specialty care, and advocating transformational opportunities for patient and nursing education.
Four patient education opportunities for nurses
1. Managing chronic illness
Finding ways to educate and engage patients in their own care is crucial to prevent chronic illnesses. Healthcare providers need the support of nurses as they struggle to manage increasing volumes of patients suffering from long COVID or post-COVID conditions; chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, which are the leading causes of death and disability; national drug-involved overdoses leading to death, specifically illicit and prescription opioid use; and rising alcohol-related deaths.
Nurses can also extend their patient care role by providing additional support to patients with multiple chronic conditions, providing more in-depth patient education and building stronger patient-nurse relationships over time.
Nurse practitioners (NPs) are uniquely equipped to develop education plans during visits, using their knowledge of symptoms, medications, social determinants of health factors, and other aspects, to better improve the patient's health and ability to follow treatment plans.
2. Providing more direct patient care
McKinsey & Company, in collaboration with American Nursing Association Enterprise, has explored how nurses spend their time during shifts, probing how they would ideally distribute their time if given the chance. Nurses report spending the majority of their shift — 54%, or about seven hours of a 12-hour shift — providing direct patient care and creating personal connections with patients, which includes patient education in addition to medication administration and support on activities of daily life.
The survey reveals that nurses wish to spend even more time on these activities as well as broader macro issues, such as helping healthcare organizations identify new approaches to address the nursing shortage and creating more sustainable and meaningful careers for nurses.
3. Advancing patient education in specialty care
The AcademyHealth Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues supports the development of health services research to examine post-pandemic nursing workforce needs. Among its collection of 2022 abstracts, two US studies, in particular, cite implications for policy or practice related to how nurses with specialty education influence higher care quality and outcomes in two areas: mental health and primary care.
-
Nurses can reduce health equities to mental health education. With the pandemic exacerbating the growing mental health crisis in the pediatric and adolescent population, the study examines how health access literacy, health self-efficacy, and emotional well-being influenced meaningful engagement with the children's mental health system.
One principle finding reveals “establishing trust over time” as an important factor for this population, highlighting resource opportunities to cultivate trusting relationships with teens. The research notes that “Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, pediatric nurse practitioners, nurse coaches, community health nurses, school nurses, and public health nurses are well poised to provide easier access to school- and community-level preventive mental health education, and services.” - NPs can address patient needs beyond acute care in the right primary care practice environment. NPs are key to improving primary care delivery. The research findings suggest that the NP's ability to address patients' emotional health needs is, in part, driven by the level of support for NP-independent practice. Moreover, findings suggest that “NPs are uniquely prepared to deliver emotional healthcare because of their nursing education, which is grounded in holistic, person-centered care…Practices should allow NPs to manage patients independently, practicing to the full scope of their education and licensure.”
4. Supporting opportunities for collective innovation and transformation
The Tri-Council for Nursing, comprised of members who represent the largest groups across the nursing spectrum of education, practice, and regulation, recognizes the power of collective innovation and transformation. At its first-ever Virtual Summit in December 2020, on the topic of education, they identified implications and opportunities from the pandemic and listed actions that could have a significant, positive impact on the nursing profession. These included:
- Expand content on public health, crisis management, equity, mental health, and social determinants of health into interprofessional education
- Foster academic-practice partnerships to utilize nursing students for vaccinations, telehealth, contact tracing, and other tasks to alleviate the shortage of staff and burnout
- Provide necessary resources for educators, students, and practicing nurses to optimize virtual environments, enhancing education and health outcomes for all
- Conduct additional research on simulation-quality data compared to clinical and alternative modalities of teaching to ensure educators deliver the best evidence-based content available.
Want to learn more about how educating patients is an important aspect of nursing care? Read our article proven tips and strategies to enhance patient education for improved patient engagement and health outcomes.
