Applying Learning Principles and Theories to Health Care Practice

Learning Objectives :
 Conceptualize Learning
 Common Principles Of Learning
 Learning Theories
 Five Major Learning Theories

- Is a lasting or a permanent change in behavior, as a result of experience which is primarily determined or influence
by the environment where the person is situated.

- It is also a complex process which involves changes in mental processing, development of emotional functioning and
social transactional skills which develop and evolve from birth to death.

- It occurs as the individual interacts with his/her environment and incorporates or applies new information or
experiences to what he/she already knows or has learned.

- e.g. society and culture, the structure or pattern of stimuli, the effectiveness or credibility of the role models and
reinforcements, feedback for correct and incorrect responses and opportunities to process and apply learnig to new
situation

 What Kind of Experiences Facilities or Hinder the learning Process

1. Teacher's selection of learning theories to be applied

2. The structuring or type of learning experience
3. Teachers knowledge of the nature of the learner
4. Material to be learned
5. Teaching methods to be employed,
6. Communication skills
7. Ability to motivate the learner
8. Teachers ability to relate new knowledge to previous experiences
9. Values
10. Self-perception
11. The learner's readiness to learn

 Common Principles Of Learning

1. Use several senses
2. Actively involve the patients or clients in the learning process
3. Provide an environment conducive to learning
4. Assess the extent to which the learner is ready to learn
5. Determine the relevance of the information
6. Repeat the information
7. Generalize information
8. Make learning a pleasant experience
9. Begin with what is known, move toward to the unknown.
10. Present information at an appropriate rate.

 The Experience Cone

 1. Reading
2. Listening
3. Looking at charts and Diagrams
4. Watching a film or Video
5. Watching a demonstration
6. Participating in a discussion making a presentation
7. Simulating/Praticing the real thing
8. Doing the real thing

 We Tend to Remember
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see, hear or read
70% of what we say
90% of what we both say and do

This is the Importance of the RLE (Related Learning Experience) which nursing students undergo in the nursing skills
Laboratory.

 Where Inside the Nursing Skills Laboratory;

 We are made to imitate the procedures that are demonstrated by the instructors (role modeling)and
 Are graded according to the skills they exhibit and the degree of comprehension of the rationale behind the
steps in the procedure as they perform the return demonstration.
 It is expected that by imitating, they would be able to retain 70% of the lessons.
 And by applying these skills and knowledge in the actual care of patients in the hospital.

 Our Level of Involvement

1. Verbal Receiving
2. Visual Receiving
3. Receiving and Participating
4. Doing

 What helps ensure that learning becomes relatively permanent?

- by Organizing the learning experience, so that it will become meaningful and pleasurable presenting the
information at the learners pace and ensure effective and efficient processing.
- Practicing or rehearsing new information mentally or physically to retain and strengthen learning.
- Applying reinforcements through rewards or recognition to make the learner know that learning has occurred.
- Assessing or Evaluating whether learning has taken place immediately after the experience or some later point
in time.
- An evaluation feedback can be used to revise, modify, revitalize or revamp the learning experience.

 Learning Theories

- Is a coherent framework and set of integrated constructs and principles that describe, explain, or predict how
people learns, how learning occurs and what motivate people to learn and change
 - Learning Theories put together concepts and propositions to explain "Why people learn and predict - under
what circumstances they will learn.

- There is no single theory that can be considered as the Best answer to these questions;

- The definition of learning generally depends on the Perspective of the learning theory that is being used.

 Contributions Of Learning Theories

- Learning theories have helped us: Understand the process of teaching and learning or how individuals acquire
knowledge and change the way they think, feel and behave.

- In the practice of healthcare, these theories have helped the health professionals.

- The health professionals needs to know some basic principles involved in the development.

- Human Development is the dynamic process of change that occurs in the Physical, psychological, soceital,
spiritual and emotional constitution and make-up of an individual which starts from the time of conception to
death(from womb to tomb)

- It is also the scientific study of the changes that may occur in people as they age or grow older in years.

- these changes may entail;

GROWTH - which is quantitative involving increase in the size of the parts of the body;

DEVELOPMENT - which is qualitative involving gradual changes in character.

Learning - any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about through experience.

Maturation - bodily changes which are primarily a result of heredity or the traits that a person inherits from his parents
which are genetically determined.

Programmed inherited biological patterns are reflected in maturation.

Behaviorist Theory
Cognitive Theory
Social Learning Theory
Psychodynamic Theory
Humanistic Theory

I. BEHAVIORIST THEORIES
In this theory, John B. Watson, as the proponent, emphasizes the importance of observable behavior in the study of
human beings.

He defined Behavior-as muscle movement and came to be associated with the "STIMULUS-RESPONSE PSYCHOLOGY."

He postulated that "behavior results from a series of conditioned reflexes and that all emotions and thoughts are a
product of behavior learned through conditioning.

 Two Types Of Behavioral Learning

1. Respondent Conditioning
a. Classical or Pavlovian conditioning
b. Systematic Desensitization
c. Stimulus Generalization
d. Spontaneous recovery

2. Operant Conditioning

A.1 RESPONDENT CONDITIONING

1. Classical Pavlovian Conditioning

- A process which influences the acquisition of new responses to environmental stimuli; A Neutral stimulus(NS)
elicits an unconditional response (UCR) through repeated pairings with an Unconditioned Stimulus(UCS).

A Neutral Stimulus (NS) is a stimulus that has no particular value, Significance or meaning to the learner.

When the NS is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the unconditioned response (UCR), there
comes a time when the NS, even without the UCS, elicit the same UCR.

SITUATIONAL ILLUSTRATION: Donna, a pretty and lively three-year-old, accidentally touched the FLAME(NS) of the
candle, she felt intense PAIN (UCS) and quickly withdraw her hand (UCR), two days later, the same experience
happened, and part of her finger was burned. Consequently, the Flame of the candle (NS)came to be associated with the
PAIN JCS) that even in the absence, just the sight of the flame makes her withdraw her hand, Hence the Neutral Stimulus
(NS), which is the flame, has now become the Conditioned Stimulus(CS) and the automatic withdrawal of the hand has
become the learned response.

2. Systematic Desensitization

- A technique based on respondent conditioning which is widely used in psychology and even in; "to reduce fear
and anxiety in the patient".

- Based from the Principle: "That repeated and gradual exposure to fear-indicing stimulus under relaxed and non-
threatening circumstances will give the patient that sense of security that no harmwill come so that he or she no
longer fear the stimulus.

- This is also a Stress-reducing strategy that is adapted to help preoperative patients, rehabilitating drug addicts
and tension headaches and phobias, among others.
3. Stimulus Generalization

- The tendency to Apply to other similar stimuli what was initially learned.

- Discrimination learning develops later, when varied experiences eventually enable the individual to differentiate
among similar stimuli.

- Discrimination learning is often involved in professional education and clinical practice.

4. Spontaneous Recovery

- Is usually applied in relapse prevention programs (rpp)and may explain why it is quite difficult to completely
eliminate "Unhealthy habits and addictive behaviors (alcoholism, drug abuse, smoking) which one may claim
having successfully "kicked the habit" or extinguished it only to find out that it may recover or reappear
anytime, even years later.

A.2 OPERANT CONDITIONING

- developed by B.F. Skinner which focuses on the behavior of the organism and the reinforcement that allows
after the response.

 REINFORECMENT

- Are events that strengthen responses.

- It is one of the most powerful tools or procedures used in teaching and is a major condition for most learning to
take place.

 Ways of Emploring Positive Reinforcement

1. Verbal ways
2. Non-verbal ways
3. Citing in Class publishing

 Classification of Educational Reinforecers

1. Recognition
2. Tangible rewards - Grades, food (free lunch) Prizes, Certificates of Appreciation of appreciation or Citations.
3. Learning activities
4, School responsibilities
5. Status indicators
6. Incentive feedback
7. Personal activities

II. COGNITIVE THEORIES OF LEARNING

- Is more than knowledge acquisition
 - It stresses that mental processes or cognition occurs between the stimulus(S) and the response (R).

- The learner's goal and expectations are more important and the tension, disequilibrium and imbalance that they
cause which will act as their motivators.

- Transfer of learning occurs when the learner mediates or "acts on " the information he/she gets or applies it in
certain situation.

- It stresses the importance of" what goes on inside the learner"

- Individual's Cognitive processes; such as perception, thinking skills, memory and ways of processing and
structuring information.

 Perspective of the Cognitive Learning Theory

1. Gestalt - refers to the configuration or patterned organization of cognitive elements reflecting the maxim that the
"Whole is greater than the sum of its parts".

The Gestalt perspective emphasizes the importance of perception in learning, which focuses on the configuration or
organization of a pattern or stimulus.

PRINCESS ANN R. SEBELLO BSN 1C