Introduction
Diversity in patients and societies means that they have different medical needs and risk factors. This means that the teaching requirements cannot be the same for everyone. There is, therefore need for different teaching methods and health promotion strategies. These different teaching strategies cause different approaches to education. With the different views of the patients, there is a need to develop new and different ways to overcome the resistance and needs.
Impact Of Diversity On Approach To Education
Diversity in the people means that people have different risk factors for certain diseases. They, therefore, have different health threats according to these risk factors (Irvine, 2010). When teaching about health promotion, one focuses on teaching them how to avoid contracting a disease that they are most likely to contract. For example, some parts of the population are most likely to contract diabetes. There is, therefore need to know what type of population one is dealing with. Nurses, therefore, develop a fact file on the focus population. They require enough data on the population so as to know what to teach and what to focus on. Some of the data the nurses need include the most prevalent diseases or conditions and the risk factors of these diseases, among other factors.
The nurses then need to examine the best health promotion model that fits the community. The development of health promotion models has assisted nurses in easily finding the best-fitting model. There are a number of models that can be used, and where they cannot fit, then new ones are to be developed or the old ones reconstructed to fit the communities (Healthy People in Healthy Communities: A Community Planning Guide Using Healthy People, 2010). In some instances, there has been a need to teach nurses new techniques for handling a specific part of the population. Diversity has, therefore, led to health education being reconstructed and subdivided. The diversity has led to the development of models that will make health promotion easier for nurses.
Overcoming Differing Viewpoints
When teaching people with various viewpoints the most important thing to know is who they are. Nurses need to learn more about their audience during health promotion so as to know what they can expect from their audience. Having more information about their beliefs and culture enables the nurses to know why they have that type of view on different issues. Information is one of the most important parts of nursing, and therefore, nurses need more information on their audience for them to be able to deal with their differing viewpoints (Irvine, 2010). In other words, there is a need to research more about them so that you may have more information about the patients.
The other strategy is listening to their viewpoints and perhaps, at times, reasoning with them. It is very prudent for a nurse to listen to their audience and hear their viewpoint of things. This is because the patience and audience, at times, are true. Their viewpoints may also carry a lot of information in them and explain certain issues, such as why the community is suffering from a specific disease (Healthy People in Healthy Communities: A Community Planning Guide Using Healthy People, 2010). For example, a patient with diabetes can provide you with information about how he takes his health, and you can know why he is suffering from another disease.
Nurses have also tried to go to the ground and live with the community so that they can know more information about the patients. This is very helpful when it comes to providing information that relies on perspective. For example, people may feel that they take clean water, but it is not until the nurse sees it will the nurse knows if it is clean or not. This is perhaps the most efficient as the nurses are able to learn about their patients through observation, and they can, from there, know how they think and do things and why they have differing viewpoints (Irvine, 2010).
References
Healthy People in Healthy Communities: A Community Planning Guide Using Healthy People 2010. (n.d.). PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e567272010-001
Irvine, F. (2010). Contextualizing Health Promotion. Health Promotion and Health Education in Nursing, 1-21. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-21464-5_1
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