Ahmad Fadhil

Importance of biochemistry
in nursing
Prepared by: Ahmad Fadhil

Nursing is a career that involves more than taking
care of sick patients, especially when working in
health institutions (e.g. Clinics and Hospitals).
According to the current curriculum guidelines for
nurse graduation, it is necessary for this
professional to develop different skills to work in
several health care environments, including
decision-making, communication, leadership,
among others. Therefore, our objective was to plan
a strategy to approximate Nursing freshmen
students to their professional environment already
in the very beginning of their graduate course. On
that purpose biochemsistry is one of the most
important course that must be taken for nursing
student. Biochemistry is the study of chemical
processes within and relating to living organisms.
This field of knowledge is considered one of the
most difficult disciplines for students in the Higher
Education Area. Most of the Degrees and Bachelors
programs related to Biology, Chemistry, Medicine,
Biotechnology, and Chemical Engineering contain
at least one course focused on Biochemistry.
During the last few years, new Degree
programmes focused on Nursing or Human
Nutrition have been designed and implemented in
most of countries and in most cases, those
programs have been improved with the addition of
courses related to Biochemistry, mainly applied
Biochemistry. In general, professors have really
appreciated this change, because Biochemistry
offers the required knowledge to properly
understand important processes such as metabolic
disorders, the theoretical principle under some
health care techniques, the assimilation of the
nutrients, etc. However, Nursing students have a
negative perception about Biochemistry and most
of them consider that this subject is not necessary
to become a qualified Nursing professional.
Biochemistry is crucial to nurses in understanding
how the human body functions in both normal and
various disease states. The Krebs Cycle, for
example, is a multi-step biochemical process by
which the human body (and many other living
organisms) produce energy as part of aerobic
metabolism. If BSN programs omitted key
fundamentals like this, nurses would have no
understanding of how such common things as
acute and critical illness, trauma, surgery, cardiac
arrest, fever, infection, hyperglycemia, or
starvation, for example, affected their patients.
Nursing interventions are based on this
understanding. In critical care, for instance, nurses
learn how to preserve patients' energy by
spreading cares throughout the day and night.
Blood gasses are performed to ensure that
patients’ acid- base balance and oxygenation
levels are maintained to promote aerobic
metabolism. How medications work is directly related
to biochemistry. Antibiotics, for example, work on
the various microorganisms differently. Some
antibiotics kill bacteria outright, by making holes in
their cell walls. Others keep bacteria from
replicating by disrupting intracellular processes.
Many medications given to patients behave
differently if blood sugar is grossly elevated or the
patient is septic and dependent on anaerobic--
rather than aerobic--metabolism. Nurses work as
part of patient care teams and closely with
families. Nurses wouldn't be able to help non-
medical team and family members understand
what is going on with their patients if they didn't
have a thorough understanding of biochemical
processes and principles. Biochemistry course is an
interesting and necessary course, it improves their
skills related to the field, it is a course they like,
and they do not want the theoretical course hours
to increase. Since biochemistry is a course that is
at the core of the humanities and addresses the
application areas of health professionals in
diagnosis and treatment, the education of this
course should be interactive and practical. Self-
evaluation, reorganization and feedback should be
taken into account in providing continuous and
accurate biochemistry education. The biochemistry
course was found to be interesting and significant
among nursing and midwifery students in favor of
nursing students.

Ahmad Fadhil

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Ahmad Fadhil

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Importance of biochemistry

Prepared by: Ahmad Fadhil

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