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Team Patient Education
Ten years ago a student study group for patient education started out as one of several in the nursing curriculum, founded by Dr. Angelika Zegelin-Abt who explored the topic of “patient education – information, instruction and consultation for patients” over many years. She is still head of the team whose objective was and is to integrate theory and real issues from nursing practice. Under her academic supervision the team designed a number of concepts to improve nursing in practice.
Over the last three years a group of nine student volunteers has been exploring patient counselling. Ideally, a nursing consultation is an open, outcome oriented eye-to-eye interview between caregiver (consultant) and patient (consulter). But the real-life situation is frequently quite different. Most consulting approaches are based on psychology, and consultation in nursing is often a short-term, ad hoc affair, parallel to other activities. The team wrote a sort of manual with ten tools to prepare consultants better for patient interviews.
Five criteria have a focus on patient care, the other five on the caregiver (self care). Patient care tools are: attentiveness, involvement, empathy, resourcing, and physical contact; the idea is to perceive patients with respect, listen, consider their feelings, inspire and encourage them, and convey connectedness. Self care tools, on the other hand, are introspection, intuition, self-perception, self-empowerment, and self-encouragement. Patient tools and self care tools constitute the “Witten tools – a DoubleCare consulting approach to nursing”.
The resulting “toolbox” was presented in a poster exhibition and a subsequent meeting on the recent 1st Higher Education Day of the German Society of Nursing Science, and awarded 2nd prize by the audience.
Students will continue to address the topic of “patient information, schooling and consulting”, since not only nursing staff in hospitals, homes for the elderly or mobile nursing services will profit from findings but - first of all - patients and their families.
Contact and more information:
Tanja Segmüller, Tanja.segmüller@uni-wh.de
www.dg-pflegewissenschaft.de/dgp