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Behaviourist and Social Learning

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Behaviourist and Social Learning
With reference to chosen theory of learning (behaviourist, social learning) discuss its application to patient education in context of general nursing.
It may be said; why is psychology significant in nursing care and why do we use learning theories to assist in patient care? Well according to Walker et al (2007), in the caring profession nurses, spend most, if not all of their working lives interacting with other people. A key part of a nurse’s job is to promote healthful behaviour. When a patient is admitted to hospital it is often their physical illness that can cause a lot of emotional distress. This means gaining a better understanding of how people cope with illnesses whether acute or chronic. Understanding health psychology will enable health care professionals to instigate healthful behaviours or ease stressful behaviours in patients. There are many evidence based behaviours that healthcare professionals can use to alleviate certain situations. Learning theory is a coherent framework of integrated constructs and principles that describe explain or predict how people learn. In this assignment the author will endeavour to discuss how behaviours and social learning theories are noteworthy in caring for people in hospital.
Bastable (2003) suggest behaviourism is concerned with learning. According to Brennan (2003) a person’s behaviour, including their personality, is learnt. As children we are tabula rasa, which means we do not have any innate behaviour, we learn these as a result of conditioning. Watson’s famous but highly unethical “little Albert experiment” highlights the influence of conditioning. Driscoll (2000) suggests that behaviourism offers a particular perspective on how learning occurs and how teaching impacts that process. Green et al (2000) propose that only evident, measurable behaviour is the appropriate object for psychology. Bandura posits that people learn from one another by habituation, association and reward but also by observing

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