Nursing is a broad field of study that deals with various subjects. You must have psychology knowledge and skills to follow up on a person’s physical and emotional needs. This blog will discuss the importance of psychology in nursing for patients and caregivers.
Psychology is the main concept in daily nursing practice; nurses approach the ideas of nursing psychology to provide quality patient health results. You need to understand methods of nursing psychology to improve your daily performance. This article will help you learn and understand psychology and how you apply it,
Why is psychology important in healthcare?
Understanding the roles of nursing psychology will help you answer questions like, “what is the importance of psychology in nursing?” Or “what is the importance of psychology in the nursing profession?” The main importance of psychology in nursing is to prevent any illnesses or health conditions caused by physical or emotional factors.
Psychology in nursing is essential; it deals with mental care, behavior and understanding a particular group of people or a patient who requires counseling. As a nurse specializing in psychology, you must interact with your patient and their families, which is very important. As a nurse, you will often come across different people with different attitudes toward their treatments.
As a nurse, you must have in-depth knowledge to analyze the patients’ behavior and attitudes; in such a case, psychology in nursing is vital as it helps nurses to fully understand different individuals and provide care to their satisfaction. Another importance of psychology in nursing is that it helps recover an illness and control it, especially in healthcare facilities.
What is the importance of psychology?
Before determining the importance of psychology, it is important to understand what psychology means or how you can define psychology in nursing. Psychology is defined as the study of human behavior and mental functions. The major application of psychology in nursing; is to protect patients and their families from physical and emotional damage.
Psychology provides the patient with the mental ability to control the psychological threat that many people face today. In society, many people are affected by financial instability, job stress, and family issues. These are affected psychological issues that require diagnosis and management by the healthcare profession.
The other importance of psychology in nursing is that you can understand why people carry themselves the way they do. As a nurse with great psychological knowledge, you will be able to create awareness and help people to boost stress management, behavior, and attitude toward everyday challenges.
Importance of psychology in the nursing discipline
As a nurse, your major role is to provide quality care and support to your patient. To successfully do this, you need to know and determine your patients’ thoughts and feelings to analyze how best you can provide the care they need. Nurses use psychology in their tasks to improve performance in their workplace.
As a professional, you work for your patient’s physical health and general health improvement. Applying the key psychology ideas to provide quality physical, emotional, and mental health care to your patients is essential. This helps you build a great relationship and improve your patient trust.
Psychology in nursing is very important, especially in patients with long-term illnesses. Psychological safety helps your patient feel homely during the treatments to facilitate the situation for everyone participating. Another importance of psychology in nursing is that it helps nurses manage the workplace. Nurses work under pressure, especially during emergency care, and psychology helps calm them down.
What are the psychological aspects of nursing
Psychology is a scientific study of people’s behavior and attitudes. In nursing, psychology on how some factors influence mental health and illness. A variety of social factors cause these illnesses. Genetical diseases are common; behavioral factors can also affect physical health and lead to different medical illnesses.
Psychology in nursing is a field that focuses on improving health and preventing and treating acute diseases and illnesses. As a nurse, you must understand how patients react to and recover from an illness; this helps boost medical care performance. According to the American Psychological Association, the main psychological aspect of nursing is that; nurses must better understand health, well-being, and diseases.
A nursing psychologist must study and know the major psychological aspects that affect mental, physical and emotional health. For many years psychology has been practiced to help different individuals change behaviors that lead to health and well-being. Nurses conduct applied research on preventing unhealthy living and behaviors such as drinking excessive alcohol and smoking.
Current challenges in nursing psychology
Psychologists work with different people, societies, and groups to minimize the potential health risks, boost general health, and prevent illness. Nurses research to provide help, lie:
- To reduce stress
- Educate individuals on how to manage weight or keep fit
- To reduce smoking
- Educating people on how to prevent diseases
- Research also helps nurses and psychologist to understand the illness
- It helps to improve nutrition
- It boosts health and speeds up recovery
Importance of psychology in nursing care
As a student, you may ask, “what are the four uses of psychology in nursing? Below are the uses of psychology in nursing. They include the following:
- Improves the relationship between the nurses and the patient
As a nurse, applying psychology best practices help you provide quality treatment to all patients. For example, young children fear interacting with adults at some point. You must apply psychology to make your patient feel more comfortable in such a case.
- Improves the patient’s assessment and treatment
Many patients cannot explain how they feel and manage the illness. Psychology helps you to assess the physical and emotional conditions of your patients. This helps you to determine the best treatment that will improve your recovery.
- Well-organized care plan
As a nurse, you must create a logical nursing care plan for your patients. When developing a nursing care plan, you must indicate every detail of your patient’s physical and emotional health status.
- Improves communication
As a nurse, you must learn how to communicate with your patient. To do this, you must have quality knowledge of psychology on how to respond to a patient illness. For example, if your patient is going through severe pain, you must do something to help the patient reduce the pain and help the patient relax sympathetically.
Methods used in nursing psychology
As defined earlier, psychology is a scientific study of human behavior, attitude, and mental functions. It is a science because it involves various methodical research and investigations to develop psychological ideas. Psychology research requires you to deeply understand complicated mental functions and human habits and gather different information.
Psychologist nurses use different methods to collect data; the type of method used will depend on the research conducted. In this article, we have listed and explained the methods of psychology in nursing. These methods include:
- The experiment method
This is a broad psychology method in nursing, divided into different types. An experimental method is mainly carried out to determine the effects and causes of a particular illness. Remember, experiments include various groups identified as control groups and experimental groups.
The following are the three common types of experimental methods used for research. They include;
- Non-experimental or quasi research
- Field analysis
- Lab experiments
In these research methods, psychologists are mainly interested in the two key variables, independent and dependent variables. The above three experiment methods explain in-depth the variables and how they relate and differ from each other.
- The observation research method
This method is said to be a quasi-research and qualitative method; here the actions of the research matter are carefully observed. This research method is important in nursing psychology; it does not require special tools or materials to gather information. This method is further divided into four major types, which include:
- Natural observation method
- Controlled observation method
- The participant observation method
- Non- participant method
These methods explain more about the observation research method and different techniques you can use in such kind of research method. Every type of observation research method provides ideas relevant to psychology in nursing.
- Content analysis
- Psychology testing
- Surveying
- Case study
Types of careers related to psychology in nursing
As a nursing student, you must understand different nursing disciplines requiring extensive psychology knowledge. This article has listed major psychology careers in nursing. They include:
- Church nursing
- School Nursing
- Psychiatric Nursing
- Hospice nursing
- Home Nursing
Winding up
Looking at the different importance of psychology in nursing, you will understand why you need to apply it when carrying out your daily task. Many nursing students do not have enough knowledge of the uses of psychology in nursing and its methods. This blog has provided relevant information that you need for psychology in nursing.
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