Patient Education: The Role of Nurses within the Healthcare Delivery System

Abstract

Information is power and as such, it is necessary to educate patients on the nature of their ailments, outcomes, benefits and risks of procedures, to involve them in decision making process and enable them to achieve fully informed consent. Patients have become more conscious consumers of healthcare, they expect to be given more information and many express a desire to participate in medical decision making. Patient education is a core component of nurses' training however, the skills are perfected over the years in the course of practice. Nurses therefore, need to appreciate the significance of patients' education and as such, make it an important aspect of nursing care in their day to day activities. It was recommended that; Patient education should be considered as a crucial aspect of healthcare and should be routinely carried out in all healthcare services, healthcare providers should use common or local language to impart health knowledge to patients so as to enable the understand the health information passed to them and this will encourage them to ask questions on areas not clear to them.