Foundations of Nursing in the Community 4th Edition by Marcia Stanhope,Jeanette Lancaster

Exercise 1

To apply the three learning domains, consider this clinical situation: The nurse identifies in the community being served a large number of women who are newly diagnosed as having diabetes. The goals of the nurse would include learning what the women know about their health condition; she would then want to provide basic information about diabetes and self-care (cognitive domain). She would also teach them how to correctly inject insulin and to determine exactly how much insulin each would need at a given time (psychomotor domain). An important step would be to demonstrate insulin injection, and the nurse would ask each woman to do a repeat demonstration to verify that she has the necessary ability and dexterity to self-inject insulin. During the teaching session, the nurse learns that the women have a limited understanding of the long-term possible complications of diabetes. Teaching at this level will include the affective domain in that the women may be denying the seriousness of their illness. They may think that a disease that causes limited pain and discomfort in its early stages cannot lead to many complications if not properly managed. In this case, the nurse would be guided by six principles of effective education. First, the nurse would convey the information clearly, using words that the women understand. A place for the teaching would be chosen that is private and comfortable, and the nurse would organize her teaching approach to fit the needs of the learner. In diabetes education, it is important not only to give information but to demonstrate and then ask the learners to practice in the class what they are learning. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the session(s) can be accomplished by asking the learners what they have learned and by watching and listening to them as they discuss and practice their new learning.
Application to other clinical examples: How would you apply the three domains of learning to developing an educational session for a group of women who have young children in the home and need to be better informed about safety practices in terms of water, stoves, poisons, medicines, tools, and so forth