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.

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.

Psychology and Memory

Psychology derives from Greek roots meaning study of the psyche, or soul. It is defined as the study of the mind and behavior. Psychology, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is an academic discipline and an applied science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific areas.

With Psychology as the study of the mind, it leads us to memory. One function of the mind is to store and remember information. Memory is the sum total of what we remember, and gives us the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships.

However, our memory is not perfect or immune to errors. Sometimes we forget things from important to mundane that, one way or another, play such a pervasive and pivotal role in our daily lives. For example, forgetting a friend’s birthday or misplacing an important document.

Daniel L. Schacter, psychologist and memory expert, presented a framework designed to outline the seven major “sins” of memory in his book, “The Seven Sins of Memory.” These seven “sins” are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, mis-attribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence.

Schacter describes the first three sins as those of omission (the memory is lost). Our memory fades over time, is easily distracted that is why we become absent-minded, and is blocked because we struggle to remember things when we know that we know it in the first place.

The last four sins Schacter describes as the sins of commission (at least some of the memory is there, but it is either wrong or unwanted. Our memory mistakes its source, is influenced by outside factors which triggers false memories, is influence by our current beliefs, and remembers things that we would rather forget.

Although our memory is not perfect, it allows us to adapt and interact in a world full of overwhelming information.

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.

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.”

The Science of Psychology

First and foremost, there are no “facts” in science. The scientific method is developed in such a way that one can ever confirm anything, they can only disprove something. That is what allows us to keep looking, never avoiding at their understanding of the way the world works. That is why it’s the concept of severity and the concept of progress. A technically sound concept is falsifiable. So no, it is not the case that “hard” science has “facts” and psychology has theories; they all only have concepts. In every way, psychological science sticks to the scientific method as much as any other science. They stick to the same guidelines and strategies. They even evaluate psychological phenomena to the best of their capability.

They use calculations and analysis and even design individual actions in past analysis just like any other science. They test their concepts for reliability and credibility and they test the factors of their concepts. There is however 2 variations between their science and other sciences that have nothing to do with how they practice science, but rather what they study: They are a much more recent science and what they analysis is more complex. The first psychological lab was established by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879 and you can think about how basic the devices would have been back then. While this might seem like several decades ago, keep in mind that Galileo developed his first telescope in 1609. Imagine how much larger a leg up astronomy has had on psychology. Cognitive psychology was not a study subject until at the early 1950’s during the cognitive trend, but not formally until Ulric Neisser’s Intellectual Psychology guide was already released in 1967.

They have had approximately 50 years of studying individual cognition. The study of individual knowledge contains procedures relevant to: feeling, interest, knowing, studying and memory, language, intellect, problem-solving, decision-making. Imagine the scope of phenomena and actions all that contains. Can you appreciate what a short amount of time that is for such a complex study of topic? And that is just cognitive psychology. Psychology as a whole studies every part of the individual experience, such as social, child, character, neuro and abnormal psychology.

Consumer Psychology

Steve Jobs popularly said “people do not know what they want until you show it to them.” Of course, Jobs was popular for presenting the globe to technology that developed whole new product groups, such as the iPod and iPad. Consequently, it was easy to understand why Jobs did not believe in customer actions. For most organizations, customer psychology is less of a wondering activity. But that does not mean promoting to customers is any simpler. Enter Michael Fishman. Michael is a New York-based professional in customer actions and customer psychology who has been assisting organizations to comprehend customer behavior for 30 years.

Food shoppingFishman says organizations battle with knowing customer psychology, because many customers do not act in logical methods. “Most individuals cannot answer the simple query of why they want the things they want,” says Fishman. “That’s because our mind pushes our decision-making procedure in methods that we’re not really conscious of.” Many individuals, if asked about a particular product or service, can review on whether they want it or not, says Fishman.  But there are subconscious drivers that also encourage consumers’ decision-making. “Consumer psychology is all about getting into that subconscious area where individuals are being instructed to shop for things they are not clear about,” says Fishman. When organizations work to comprehend their own consumer’s psychology, business and marketing becomes “way more foreseeable and more sympathetic in a way.”

Fishman’s interest for assisting organizations to comprehend customer psychology was one purpose behind his choice to group with top promoting writer Ramit Sethi to make BehaviorCon, targeted on customer actions and customer psychology. Fishman says that BehaviorCon was inspired, in part, on the latest reputation of non-fiction guides on the subject. “There have been so many top promoting guides on customer psychology and customer behavior in the last four to five years and yet, no conference outside of the academic globe,” says Fishman. “Ramit and I made the decision to make the conference we would love to go to if there was one.”