concepts in psychology | Distance Learning Systems (DLSI)

Nursing and the Schools of Psychology

Studying the mind and its corresponding behaviors are the concerns of psychology. Psychology establishes general assumptions through research; methods that have its own affinity with the study of nursing. Psychology may only be an increment to the nursing profession; but even before its insertion into the nursing course, nurses have already been using psychological techniques in treating their patients. This has been manifested through the schools of thought that psychology employs to its patients. Let us examine a few of these schools of thought that has already found its expression in the nursing field.

The Biological School
The biological matters that compose the human brain have an effect on the human behavior. If a nurse is aware of this, then they will be able to properly manage the patient. The nurse will also be able to keep in mind certain physiological reactions that can be expected from the patient.

The Behavioral School
As has been said, psychology concerns itself with human behavior. Nurses should be able to determine behavioral patterns from the patient they is handling. If a nurse has the capacity go over the patient’s demeanor, then they has taken the first step towards treating the patient well.

The Cognitive School
Mental processes that manifest through human activity should be part of a nurse’s agenda of concern. As the saying goes, “actions speak louder than words.” If a nurse has a knack for determining peculiar behaviors within his/her patient, then both the nurse and the patient benefit from the professional’s good awareness.

The Social School
Like Psychology, the inclusion of Sociology to the nursing curriculum enables nurses to see attitudes in their patients based on their sociological status. This helps nurses create a complete assessment of their patients’ conditions.

The Psychoanalytic School
Ever since Freud introduced the study of psychoanalysis, it has become a part of every department in every office, including the nursing department. The analysis that goes about it is crucial in giving enough evaluation over a patient.

Psychology and Distance Learning

Psychology is a special form of discipline or study. It basically concerns itself with the mind and its corresponding behavior. It seeks to understand an individual or a group through specific principles with the use of research and some generally accepted theories. An expert in psychology is called a psychologist. Psychologists explore a wide variety of subjects and theories in the course of his duty. Perceptions, emotions, intelligence, motivations, personality, brain functioning and even interpersonal talk are some of the things a psychologist has to deal with in his client.

Most colleges and universities offer Psychology as an integral part of their curriculum. In fact, some courses that don’t primarily concern itself with psychology include it as one of their minor subjects. It is essentially a part of every student’s education. The course also has to keep up with the times. Online schools are a dime a dozen nowadays that you could literally choose from a long list of them with just a press of a key, and, as anticipated, Psychology degrees are also offered.

You might no longer see the need to literally go to a conventional school for you to have that Psychology career. A lot of distance learning institutions are offering this course with modern concepts and technology, along with its affordable entry at times, from enrollment to your monthly tuition. It has become more accessible over the years. You could literally have it everywhere, even at the privacy of your own home. A student of psychology can now study the empirical and deductive methods of psychology as fast as the speed of his internet connection.

The availability of Psychology as a degree online is a breakthrough. It can now easily connect with other sciences that has its recent rise in the internet as well such social sciences, humanities and medicine.

Three Effective Strategies To Improve Your Grade In College Subjects

The manner of education in college is quite different from high school. A lot of college professors give lessons to student in a different approach. Often time they just provide a list of reference where students can read lessons about the subject. College professors, most of the time impose personal research and study to students than an in depth teaching class. This is one of the major reasons why a student flunk to some college subjects like Anatomy & Physiology.

Some students would find it hard to adjust from a high school “spoon-feed” method of learning, to a highly independent college instruction strategy. Passing or getting a good grade in a college subject can be very difficult to an unadjusted student. It’s best that a college student adapt to a more independent teaching method. Here are other three effective strategies to help a student achieve a high grade in difficult college subjects:

Create a Habit to Study Your Lessons in Advance
Preparing for the next day’s lessons would be the wisest thing to do. Read and study the lessons in advance. Studying in advance will provide you more time to deeply learn the lesson. This will also allow you to coup up with the professor’s lesson for the next day.

Participate in Study Groups
Another effective way for learning lesson in difficult subjects like Psychology is thru conducting group studies. Students help each other in studying the lessons in the subject. They can share thoughts and ideas about a specific topic in the lesson to other students.

Tutorial Classes
You can also hire a highly knowledgeable individual that can help learn and study your lessons well. Hiring tutors can reinforce your learning about the lessons in Anatomy & Physiology or Psychology subjects. They can also provide you with an in-depth teaching method that you need in order to fully understand the lessons in difficult college subjects.

Reasons To Study Psychology

There have been a lot of criticisms that Psychology has received over the years, as a college major and as a career path. Reasons ranging from “it’s not useful” to “It’s just easy and fun” as a college major. People also criticize Psychology as having a low pay and few jobs.

But there are many positive reasons to study Psychology, even if you do not plan to become a Psychology major or work in a Psychology-related profession. Reasons that go beyond career possibilities because it is all around you and touches on every aspect of your life.

One of the reasons to study Psychology is that it can help you better understand yourself and the people around you. You might find yourself gaining a deeper understanding of the many influences that have impacted your own life because you will learn more about how development occurs, how personality forms, and how society and culture impact behavior. Moreover, you might be able to understand the influences and motivations when someone behaves in certain way.

Psychology’s emphasis is on research methods and statistics. This will give you a good grasp of these methods that will contribute greatly on the success of your career, regardless whether you pursue a career in Psychology or somewhere else.

You will also develop your critical thinking skills by studying Psychology. A great deal of topics such as the scientific method, decision-making, and problem-solving are what you study in Psychology. These topics help hone your ability to think deeply and critically about different issues, which is considered to be essential to being an educated person.

There are still a lot of reasons to study Psychology. At best, it can help you better understand who you are, how you will be, and your interaction with your family, friends, and strangers. Aside from that, graduates with Psychology degrees end up in a wide array of occupations.

The Importance of Psychology in the Nursing Profession

Despite the coming completely from different disciplines, Psychology has a huge relevance on the nursing practice. Many aspiring nurses have wondered the need fro them to devote hours in studying Psychology. They don’t realize that both are interrelated with each other.

Nurses work in a setting where they’re required to interact with other professionals in an effort to bring the best quality care for their patients. They need to fully understand how other people behave and act in certain situations – this is where Psychology comes into play.

In managing patients with different illnesses, both nurses and psychologists not only work in understanding the physical pain associated, but also change their thought and attitudes to improve well-being.

When assessing a patient’s condition, nurses also consider how patient’s respond to their illness. Some patients are optimistic and easily cope with their illness, while others have a negative reaction where they become angry and stubborn. Nurses may find it very difficult to handle such patients and need to include them as part of their evaluation of the patient.

With the help of psychology, nurses will know how to interact with their patients based on different factors such as gender and age. For instance, young patients may be more afraid than adults. They may have difficulties in understanding their illness. A nurse can apply his knowledge of child development and psychology and relate to the young patients in a way their apprehensions are alleviated. Thus, psychology can help improve the nurse and patient relationship. As a result, patients can openly interact and communicate with them and inform them about their specific needs.

With psychological knowledge also, nurses are able to get the trust of their patients. This makes the patients more responsive with the instructions they are given. Sometimes, they even take a positive role in their own wellness.

Learning Psychology and its Benefits

Psychology is basically the study of behavior, mental operations and performance of people. It is also the connection of educational, theoretical and applied science.

Students who studied psychology devotedly were able to understand the compound process of the brain that commands the actions of all human. They also have come to realize that they can make use of psychology in understanding the behaviors, situations and everyday life of all the people.

Why Learning Psychology is important?

Basically, there are a lot of reasons why learning psychology is important. Students will have the chance to experience the following:

The ability to understand own behavior

Studying psychology will allow students to understand their own behavior, emotions and ideas. They will also realize that studying the principles of psychology will allow them to assess, evaluate and provide solutions to all unwanted emotional situations.

Enhanced Communication Expertise

Most famous psychologists have discovered that humans are involved in all kinds of communication. Studying psychology will allow students to understand that communication skills can improve the effectiveness of human interaction.

The ability to understand the behavior of other people

According to Heidelburg of University of Ohio, studying psychology enables students to understand the behavior of other people. They will have the ability to read people’s minds and emotions. Understanding human emotions can be hard, but if students can master the principles of psychology, it will be easier to understand human actions. In addition, it can also improve student’s ability to help others in dealing with their dilemmas.

Better Career Ahead

Students who are so devoted in studying psychology have one thing in common. They want to become the best and effective psychologists. They also know that there is an urgent need for more psychologists since there are increasing numbers of individuals with mental disability. Right after mastering all theories and principles of psychology, students will have the chance to prepare themselves in obtaining a certification or license.

Learning the basics of psychology is important because it can be applied and used to countless life experiences.

Psychology in Medical Education

Psychologists have to acquire a much better knowledge of the fundamental biological sciences if they wish to engage in a much bigger position in educating medical students, and take part in study and treatment inside the health care process.

Health-related schools are switching from being organized on biologically based departments to multidisciplinary organizations, and that study funded by the National Institutes of Health is requiring a much more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary strategy. These changes generate a chance for psychology to play a better role in medical instruction and health investigation.

The inability for making psychology highly relevant to the biological fundamentals of medicine can lead to psychology getting minimally highly relevant to medical education and practice. For instance, a psychologist who would like to work in an interdisciplinary treatment plan targeting cancer must provide expertise about a few of the behavioral aspects in the start of cancer – but should know something about oncology and defense mechanisms function, as well.

Definitely, in order to comprehend and educate about these topics, it is essential that we have a number of this fundamental knowledge. There’s a necessity for clinical health psychologists to understand more about anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. For college students studying to become pharmacists for example, psychology offers quite a bit to educate about patient decision-making, social support and problem management and self-care. For example, research has discovered that asking a patient, “Any questions?” when they pick up a prescription decreases the likelihood that a patient will in fact ask a question. By contrast, asking, “What questions do you have?” results in more connection between patient and pharmacist.

Psychologists may also provide important communication instruction on how to build a connection with patients – whether it’s working with children who won’t sit still in the chair or adults who become stressed when dealing with a dental appointment.

A lot more has to be completed to help make education and training possibilities readily available for psychologists within educational health centers.

Relating Psychology to Health

Psychology is not only for people with mental problems or illnesses. Patients with any health conditions may have undergone psychological difficulties, before or during the condition. The behavioral and social factors cause or lead to almost every reason for dying, illness, and disability and directly cause roughly 1 / 2 of deaths every year. Mental and behavioral health care play a substantial role within the prevention, diagnosis and/or management of the 15 main reasons for dying within the United States. These diseases are cancer, pneumonia, cardiovascular disease, stroke, Septicemia, hypertension, chronic lower respiratory system disease, accidents, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, kidney disease, suicide, chronic liver disease, Parkinson’s Disease as well as assault/homicide.

According to some research, psychological distress might have an adverse effect and is capable of doing modifying various options that come with the immune response system. Around 85% of physician visits are suitable for issues that possess a significant psychological and behavioral component, for example chronic ailments. For instance, studies have proven an association between depression and cancer.

Ideas, attitudes, and feelings can accelerate the start of cardiovascular diseases. This leads to the conclusion that most people are experiencing diseases in relation to their mental and psychological health. People with diabetes are two times as likely as people without diabetes to possess serious psychological distress. Depression is prevalent in roughly 20% of cancer patients and could slow down treatment and recovery. Children and care providers of cancer patients might also experience depression.

Supplying mental and behavioral health services included in a health care model greatly increases access for underserved people. A built-in health care approach helps eliminate stigma in addition to increasing the understanding of the psychosocial facets of health. Psychologists play a vital role in integrated health care by helping people modify their behavior to avoid and get over health problems. People in the United States can be more healthy and efficient when psychology is incorporated into primary health care.

Psychology and Engineers

Simply put, engineers make things. But is discovering that “new” innovation, a large psychological leap from factor A to factor B, or are there scores of unseen advanced actions in between? The University of Pittsburgh’s Joel Chan and Christian Schunn say that not enough has been done to comprehend how engineers make. Knowing the procedure, they say, may offer a street map for boosting up advancement.

Chan, a graduate student in psychology in Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and his mentor Schunn, a professor of psychology as well as a senior researcher in Pitt’s Learning Research and Development Center, released a document online in the publication Cognitive Science that goes into the technicalities of the innovative technological advancement mind by analyzing the procedure in the real world. “Most organizations make all their money on new things,” Schunn says. “They hardly break even on old items. They have to innovate to be practical and that’s a hard direction to adhere to.”

In the desire of advancement, Schunn says, organizations pay big cash to professionals to help encourage creativeness. “But little of what they do is depending on research,” he contributes. So, along with Chan, Schunn used several hours of transcripts of an experienced technological advancement team’s “brainstorming” classes and split down the discussion consistently, looking for the direction by which thought A led to thought B that led to cutting-edge C. “We want to comprehend the characteristics of cognitive restrictions,” Schunn says. “Why do we get trapped (on an idea), what types of factors get us unstuck and why do they work?”

What they discovered in the classes they analyzed is that new concepts didn’t spring completely formed after large cognitive actions. Creativity is a stepwise procedure in which idea A spurs a new, but carefully relevant thought, which encourages another step-by-step step and the sequence of small psychological developments sometimes, gradually finishes with a modern concept in a team setting. Channeling Thomas Edison’s dictum that genius is 1% motivation and 99% perspiration, Schunn says that “inspiration makes some perspiration.”

Positive Psychology Studies

In An Introduction to Positive Psychology, Dr. William Compton depicts positive psychology as looking “to make typical life more satisfying.” It uses the scientific method to comprehend the positive and candidly satisfying parts of human behavior. It is the study of what actions, interests and inspirations best contribute to the good life. These interests are accessible to us paying little heed to our heritage, background or socioeconomic standing. They are uninhibitedly accessible to any individual who decides to commit their lives to them. Here are some interesting positive psychology studies done by researchers.

1. From Wealth to Well-being – Harvard Business School, 2009. While there does seem, by all accounts, to be some association between happiness and income when fundamental needs are not yet met, individuals have a tendency to overestimate the impact of riches on happiness by 100%. Money does not lead as much happiness that individuals think it will.

2. Purchasing Experiences, not Possessions, Leads to Greater Happiness – San Francisco State University, 2009. This psychology study shows that experiential buys, for example, a dinner out or theater tickets, bring about better well being than material belongings. These experiences have a tendency to fulfill higher order needs, particularly the requirement for social connectedness and a feeling of being invigorated.

3. The Science of Gratitude – University of Pennsylvania, 2005. One of the best contributing variables to general happiness in life is the amount of appreciation we show. Furthermore, an observable contrast could be experienced with as little as three words every day (“Thank you for… “).

4. Trust, Morality, and Oxytocin – Claremont Graduate University, 2011. In light of research discoveries, psychologists believe humankind’s trust, compassion and ethical quality expand as their levels of oxycotin expand.

5. For a Better Day, Smile – Michigan State University, 2011. Individuals who smile as a consequence of developing positive thoughts can fundamentally and promptly enhance their mood. Simply put, one easy approach to enhance your state of mind at this moment is to recall pleasant memories and smile about it.