Patient Education

[prairiegirl]

Are there any nurses out there that do patient education? Such as education for diabetic, heart disease, etc patients on how to properly care for themselves. I love teaching and helping people and didnt know if there was a field in nursing that focused on teaching patients and not just bedside care. Anyone have any info?

[Heidi2002]

Every aspect of nursing has patient teaching involved, whether it is thought of that way or not. There are many nursing jobs, that only focus on teaching, such as, nurse educators and most community health nurses to name some. That's great that you love teaching so much. You can always become a instructor of First Aid, CPR, ACLS, ENPC, ect. if your current job doesn't fullfill your teaching desires.

Good Luck:)

[heart queen]

Excellent question!!! education is paramount to our patients! A soley designated patient educator will varry facility to facility. Where I was before we used to have a designated Diabetes, Stroke, Cardiac and breast feeding educator. Due to BUDGET, they were all reassigned.

Also care coordinators, who primarily focus on discharge (in my facility) do a tremendous amount of patient teaching, IE. lovonox injections. but this is not their primary focus.

I am sure there are many facilities who do offer this role as patient educator, however in my experience those are the first positions that are cut. Take this with a grain of salt as I'm sure that many facilities, hopefully, would never consider cutting such a tremendously important roll.

Good luck to you in your search