Educational Psychology by healthcare practitioners

For almost four years, I realized that being a health professional, be in the clinical or in a academe setting must be able to impart his knowledge by educating the patient as long as he can. It’s not just we’re attending to their medications and treatment but I realized that we are more than what we are expected. It’s true that we are called to save people’s lives but our duty is also to promote healthcare awareness to humanity and spread it throughout the world using our skills which I think  the valuable tool of our profession.

We meet a certain goal, purpose, and objective by following a system or process that serves our basis to an effective patient education. We may encounter several barriers and obstacles in both teaching and learning but these things can be eradicated or alleviated if we learn the alternatives. We may not convince people at that certain point but it is an achievement for us health practitioners that somehow we tried our best to correct what has been their beliefs about that certain situation.

In teaching health education, psychology plays a major role in assessing students as well as their way in perceiving what they need to learn. Psychology is the foundation that has to be focused, now that we’re dealing with all kinds of people and not just students in the school. I realized that after all these years, this field of science built up my way of learning knowing that in behaviorism, I was able to achieve something because of positive reinforcements such as incentives and rewards and the negative reinforcement and punishment in which most of us are afraid of. Repetition has made me do things I'm now used to. Therefore, by the formation of behaviorism, people develop observable behaviors mostly by improving their personality.

As observable behaviors developed, mental processes tend to sharpen as well. The main assumption of cognitive psychology is that there are cognitive processes that take place and influence the way things are learned. Explanations of how cognitive processes work are known as information processing theories or models. The three-component model of information processing is being taught in Educational Psychology. It looks something like this. Important classroom principles from cognitive psychology include meaningful learning, organization, and elaboration. One has to deal with these psychological aspects because this plays an instrument for us to understand the basic abode of man.

The role learning theories in education

The highschool students nowadays should be sensitive enough to the needs of other people so what I want to impart to them is the critical thinking skill and being a responsible student by participating and getting involved with organizations dedicated in providing welfare to those who are in utmost need.

For me to mold their critical thinking skills, I have to give them them a case situation in which they have to talk with themselves and deal with it. The theory of behaviorism will come out if I continue to give them this and impost a higher grade as incentive to do a narrative reporting based from what they have learned and let them formulate ways on how they are going to solve the problem. Each student must able to present in front and after that another set of reporting comes for the next week. That should be a routine but of course, I will still be facilitating the class and clarifying things that need to be cleared for the student’s benefit. The observable behavior there is their improved ability to deal with complicated things not just by themselves but also considering the opinions and stand from other people as well.

As for cognitivism theory is concerned, my follow-up questions will stimulate the ability of these students to use their reasoning by asking mostly the WHY and HOW questions. Because of this, encouraging them also to participate in organizations and joining movements for a cause will lead to social involvement particularly responding to other’s needs and engage in leadership status because of his or her prowess to initiate certain steps towards the betterment of a certain cause he or she is in favor of.

Barriers and Obstacles in teaching Public Health

The barriers and obstacles to teaching and learning can never be out in the scenario, it is for us healthcare professionals to deal with the shortcomings and use these hindrances as our tool for an effective transmission of healthcare awareness. The factors that might hinder my ability to teach might be the lack of resources, absence of documentation system, and the relationship between me and the residents. The lack of resources is one thing to consider because you are not only providing educational materials but you have to allocate the budget. Next thing is the lack of documentation system, knowing that we're not familiar with the place, the relationship between me and the residents in that barangay might be at stake because they are may be following some rituals that we're not used to.

In considering the obstacles that affect the ability of the learner, the primary concern that I might encounter are the time, sickness, low-literacy and the overwhelming extent of health information. Time should be looked upon because not the whole day the residents would be devoted to listen what you teach. Maybe there are more important things that they need to attend to most especially with the sick people who are having lower attention span. Low-literacy can affect in a sense that your reading materials might be useless because some people can not be able to read as well as the taboos or the traditional thinking of the populace.

how about feeding programs that would lift residents
to listen? 

These barriers and obstacles might be appalling but if we can handle it based from our preparations, then we can control and overcome it. As to barriers to teaching, the ability to establish a relationship between them and to reach out to them is a good thing to start what you want them to know based from your acquired knowledge and skills. I must be time-efficient so that I can deliver all the information they need to know in a certain time. Our ability to make things right should be the bread and butter of all these problems because the low-literacy of the residents or what is customary for them are nothing if we can teach them effectively and efficiently.

Propagating public health to the community

We as healthcare professionals should devote ourselves not just for the people who can afford quality healthcare education but also to those people who are in utmost need. When we think about them, we assume that they are living in remote areas where they basically need assistance, awareness and at the same time, educate them in a level of their understanding. In my own perspective, it’s not always teaching that should be emphasized but it is the providing of an environment that is conducive to their learning. So it’s essential to know what it’s gonna be if we put ourselves into their shoes because by doing this way, we will be able to know how we are going to handle the situation, devise a teaching strategy and implement it in a right away.

Normally, it’s not always that when you teach or provide information, the people will always get the gist of it. It’s not always they will follow what you've just said and leave what have been used to, so as a health educator, the ability to use our knowledge and skills should be used up by simply educating them in a step-by-step process until such time they will be able to correlate all the information by themselves. For example, I’m going to start about the epidemiology of a certain disease (eg. dengue, typhoid), followed by the causes and its treatment after discussing all of these things the prevention and control will follow. Basically, when we talk about it that should be thoroughly explained like how important it is to have a clean environment and a must to drink clean and potable water. Being practical-wise, it is necessary for me provide them materials for their understanding and being an example that reflects also to your personality as well. My convincing power should be enhanced in order for the residents to believe because what I’m doing is for the benefit of them to prevent increasing these cases as soon as possible.