TEACH THE PATIENT AND FAMILY

Teaching is a major role of the nurse in restoring health, promoting
health and preventing illness. When a person is ill, the nurse
demonstrates things the patient can do to help with recovery. For
example, nurses teach patients to cough and breathe deeply after
surgery to prevent lung complications. They show patients how to
walk on crutches. They teach people with diabetes to monitor their
blood sugar.
Whenever the nurse works with a patient, the nurse uses the
opportunity to teach that person about self-care. Nurses teach both
patients and their families about proper diet and nutrition, cleanliness
and hygiene, exercise, sleep and rest and all the other aspects of a
healthy life.
Before the patient leaves the hospital, the nurse teaches the patient
and family about care at home. For example, nurses teach family
members how to bathe the person or wash his or her hair in bed,
and how to feed the person or change dressings.
Nurses teach people how to minimize the effects of disability so that
they will have the best quality of life.
Nurses are with people during the most critical times of their lives.
Nurses are with people when they are born, when they are injured or
ill, when they die. People share the most intimate details of their
lives with nurses; they undress for nurses, and trust them to
perform painful procedures.
Nurses are at the bedside of the sick and suffering 24 hours a day.
They are there when patients cannot sleep because of pain or fear
or loneliness. They are there to feed patients, bathe them, and to
support them.
Nurses have a long history of caring for the patient and speaking for
his or her needs. That is what advocacy is about: supporting the
patient, speaking on that person’s behalf, and interceding when
necessary. This advocacy is a part of the nurse’s caring and a part
of the closeness and trust between nurse and patient that gives
nursing a very special place in health care.