Understanding Psychology for Nursing Students

Jan De Vries, Fiona Timmins

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781412961950
• eBook ISBN: 9781473987593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nursing

Do your students find psychology difficult to engage with or want a textbook that is easy to read? Would they benefit from a textbook that demonstrates how psychology applies to nursing?

Right from the start of their programme it is crucial for nursing students to understand the significance of psychology in nursing. This book helps students recognise why they need to know about psychology, how it can affect and influence their individual nursing practice as well as the role it plays in health and illness.Written in clear, easy to follow language and with each chapter linking to relevant NMC Standards and Essentials Skills Clusters it simplifies the key theory and puts the discipline of psychology into context for nursing students, with clear examples and case studies used throughout. Transforming Nursing Practice is a series tailor made for pre-registration student nurses. Each book in the series is:

·Affordable

·Mapped to the NMC Standards and Essential Skills Clusters

·Focused on applying theory to practice

·Full of active learning features

'The set of books is an excellent resource for students. The series is small, easily portable and valuable. I use the whole set on a regular basis.' - Fiona Davies, Senior Nurse Lecturer, University of Derby

Chapter 1

Psychology as a field of study and why nurses need to know about it

Chapter aims

After reading this chapter you will be able to:

• explain what psychology is and how it applies and contributes to nursing;

• consider psychological aspects in a variety of health-care and nursing situations;

• outline how psychologists do research and how to apply psychological research methods to nursing and health-care problems;

• discuss how psychology fits into the bio-psycho-social model.

This chapter introduces the field of psychology, demonstrating how psychology teaches us to reflect on behaviour and mental processes in both ourselves and in other people. We will look at how psychology informs our knowledge of the non-medical aspects of health and illness. The chapter introduces you to a psychological mind-set that will inform your provision of care, and provides a background knowledge that will help in your lifelong learning. Every step of the way you will see the relevance of psychology to nursing and health care. If you are ambitious to make a difference in your discipline, psychology can be a real asset. Ask patients and families, even years later, to give an account of their experiences in health care, and they invariably remember the nurse who provided more than expert care, also offering warmth, hope, intelligent support and inspiration. This book is intended to assist you in becoming that nurse!

While we recognise that you may refer to people in your care in different ways, such as ‘patient’, ‘client’, or ‘service user’, we will refer to them mostly as ‘patients’ for the sake of simplicity. ‘Patient/client/service user’ is a bit awkward, don’t you agree?

Introduction

What is psychology?

Psychology is often defined as the ‘scientific study of behaviour and mental processes’ (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2014, p. 5). Thus it focuses not only on what we do, and how and why we do it, but also on our feelings, our thinking and everything else that goes on in our heads. Since much of what we do, feel and think is related to other humans, psychology also focuses on our relationships and interactions with others. If we want to make sure that we don’t exclude anything from how we define psychology, it would be perfectly acceptable to consider it the study of the human experience. The term ‘scientific’ suggests that psychology is more than using our powers of observation, interpretation and reasoning to make sense of ourselves and others. Psychologists also make use of systematic methods of research and gather and evaluate evidence to test any statement made about the human experience.

Because psychology is about us, it has been widely applied for practical use in areas such as education, media, architecture, city planning, manufacturing, retail, etc. It also has a firm foothold in other sciences such as business studies, economics, anthropology, sociology and engineering. Relevant for you, psychology has practical applications to nursing and health care and contributes theoretically and in research to our understanding of health, illness, medicine and nursing theory. The next section will give you an impression of these applications and how they are approached within this book.

Why should nurses learn about psychology?

The short answer to this question is that regulating bodies for nursing education prescribe the inclusion of psychology to become a registered nurse (see the Introduction of this book). The long answer is in this book. Every step of the way we will apply psychology to nursing and health care and, hopefully, it will become and remain clear to you why it is useful. We’ll highlight some important reasons below.

The importance of psychology was recognised even at the beginning of the twentieth century when both fields were still in their infancy as subjects of scholarly study. An early author of a psychology text for nursing phrased the future of psychology in nursing in urgent terms:

The time will come inevitably, when all training schools of standing will include the subject in the course of study, and, as a result, the power of nursing will increase immeasurably. A large proportion of nurses’ blunders occur because they do not possess a working knowledge of psychology. Psychology should not be considered a subject which may be included in the nursing curriculum, but as one which cannot be omitted.

(Higgins, 1921, p. vii.)

More broadly, the nursing literature identified psychology as important, in particular because of its practical use in helping nurses understand themselves, the care they provide, the people in their care, their colleagues, and the health-care organisations and communities within which they work (de Vries and Timmins, 2012). Ultimately this is aimed at optimising care.

Let us see if we can make this come alive for you. In the next section we’ll present a series of scenarios that relate to practical nursing situations and problems. This will elucidate the application of psychology while also providing an overview of what you will learn in this book.

Figure 1.1: Why should nurses study psychology?

The application of psychology in nursing

Place yourself in the role of the nurse, reflect on each of the situations and try to answer the questions. Don’t worry if it is not immediately clear to you what each scenario is about. You may want to turn to the chapters indicated to preview the content.

Scenario: Making contact (see Chs 2 and 10)

Someone in your care is uncommunicative and looks sad. Your questions meet with very short answers and the person does not look you in the eyes. You feel that it is important to get through to her because there are decisions to be made that require the person’s active contribution. Intuitively what approach would you take and what are the alternatives?

Relevant themes: different schools of thought within psychology.

An outline response is provided at the end of the chapter.

Nurses often make intuitive decisions about how to communicate but, as a professional, it is important to understand why you do what you do so you can develop it further and become really good at it. Psychology offers assistance and background to make informed choices and practical guidance to enhance communication between nurse and patient. In this case, different psychological perspectives or schools of thought indicate a variety of approaches to be taken. Chapters 2 and 10 will provide considerations on, for instance, offering effective emotional support (humanistic), help with decision making (cognitive), providing encouragement (behavioural) and giving positive energy (positive psychology).

Scenario: Understanding the brain (see Ch. 3)

In a team meeting a neurologist explains how one of the patients who had a serious car accident has suffered lesions in the brain. There is clear evidence of damage to the hindbrain (cerebellum), but the results are less clear on how subcortical areas such as the amygdala and hypothalamus are affected. When asked about your observations of the patient in the last few days you are not sure what to say. Without knowing what to look for you did not really pay that much attention. Can you argue why it is important for a nurse to be able to discuss these matters with a doctor?

Relevant themes: structure and functions of the nervous system and the brain; sensation and perception.

An outline response is provided at the end of the chapter.

Psychologists emphasise that the way in which people function cannot be appreciated if we don’t study how it is organised in the brain and nervous system. Psychology and biology overlap here. Chapter 3 is specifically aimed at helping nurses grasp how the structure and functions of the brain relate and how this is expressed in what you see in the people in your care. This will allow you to communicate and contribute to team meetings in which matters of the brain are discussed. In regard to this scenario, if you had, for instance, perceived uncontrolled emotional outbursts in the patient, you would have realised that these would have been relevant to the consultant’s query (because they would suggest the amygdala could be affected).

Scenario: Development and learning (see Ch. 4)

As part of your daily routine you are instructing patients of different ages in several ways (to use crutches, sort medication, eat independently, recognise triggers for becoming unwell, health promotion, etc.). After a while you start to realise that your approach is different for various age groups. Moreover, it transpires that individuals learn in very different ways. Can you give examples of age differences in learning?

Relevant themes: stages of development and approaches to learning.

An outline response is provided at the end of the chapter.

Without comprehension of the complexity of developmental and learning processes it is going to be very hard to teach even simple things. Also, your efforts to affect the thinking, emotions and behaviour of the people in your care will be hit and miss. Reading Chapter 4 will help you to fathom these processes and apply them in multiple ways. Learning will be more effective if you take experience and development into account, identify the readiness to learn a specific skill or principle, and ascertain what kind of support needs to be provided. Association, encouragement, modelling and understanding are part of many learning experiences. Psychology provides the foundation of how to support and influence the people in your care.

Scenario: Nightshift (see Chs 5 and 6)

You have just started the third night of a nightshift. You had a little difficulty sleeping during the last couple of days. Your mind is a bit clouded. You misjudge a situation because you jumped to a conclusion. You are physically fine, but find it hard to focus. You realise that there are some gaps in your memory of your shift. How should you address this situation?

Relevant themes: consciousness, sleep, memory.

An outline response is provided at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 5 will provide you with an outline of how memory and consciousness work, including sleep processes and issues that can arise, thus helping you to understand why the lack of sleep has affected your judgement and memory. Based on this you might like then to plan ways to improve your sleep effectiveness. Irregular hours and shift work are commonplace in nursing and it is important that you begin to understand and develop ways to deal with changing patterns of sleep so that you remain at all times a safe and effective practitioner.

Scenario: Under pressure (see Ch. 6)

You are on duty in a busy Emergency Department (ED). Tensions are rising because people have to wait much longer than they had hoped for. There is a lot of complaining. Consequently, you are put under pressure and find it hard to keep making rational decisions about care priorities. At the end of the night you are in turmoil. Even when you arrive home you are still...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Transforming Nursing Practice
• About the Authors
• Sources and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Psychology as a Field of Study and Why Nurses Need to Know About it
• 2 Understanding Ourselves From Various Psychological Perspectives
• 3 The Core of Our Functioning and How We Make Sense of Our World
• 4 How We Develop and How We Learn
• 5 Consciousness and Memory
• 6 Thinking, Motivation, Feeling, Action
• 7 We are Social Animals
• 8 The Psychology of Health and Stress
• 9 The Crisis of Illness
• 10 The Psychology of Care in Practice
• References
• Index