NAME: MADE SIMO Godlove Danielle Samuella

COURSE: Social Psychology CA

CLASS: Licence special sciences infirmiere
MATRICULE: 22IO55

Question: Using examples from the Cameroonian hospital environment, show that risk-taking
among nurses is influenced by beliefs

Social psychology refers to the science of understanding a person's feelings, behaviours, and
personalities in social relationships and how the presence of other people affects them. Social
psychology covers many areas of research that are capable of understanding humans in their
respective communities further. Some of these fields of research are social cognition, attitude
changes, violence, group behaviour, and social influence. Social cognition is concerned with
how a person processes and stores social information to remember details necessary for their
social relationships. Attitude changes referred to the change in a person's behaviour when their
social relationship changes or a new person invaded their social relationships. Violence and
aggression look at the social and media influence on why people have aggressive behaviours
and tendencies toward other groups. Group behaviour is one of the largest research because it
deals with how individuals change their behaviours whenever they are part of a group. It also
researches the differences between the behaviours of different groups of people. Lastly, social
influence refers to how a social relationship affects the decision-making of an individual. It
includes peer pressure and bias that can change an individual's perception of the world.

When considering the overall health of an individual, it’s important to recognize the relationship
between the mind and body. In fact, mental health issues can be risk factors for a variety of
physical diagnoses. For example, anxiety is linked to issues in high blood pressure and heart
disease. Both schizophrenia and depression are shown to impact the body’s resistance to insulin,
resulting in a higher risk for type 2 diabetes.

This relationship goes both ways physical diseases can lead to mental health issues, especially
in the case of chronic illnesses. Depression, for example, becomes common among those with
cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.
When nurses incorporate elements of psychology into their care, they will be able to create
patient plans that take the psychological elements of their health into account, resulting in a
more holistic approach to care.

Risk-taking related to nurses can be different from one country to another, from one culture to
another. Contexts, cultural values and beliefs are likely to play a role in risk taking. Humans
live in changing social contexts that interact with each other. In this sense, several contexts are
present in the life of an individual (family, friends, school environment, etc.). Family status and
education play an important role in risk-taking among adolescents and young adults. Young
people from stepfamilies have more accidents than young people from single-parent families.
Parents adopt either authoritarianism, laxity or negotiated authority to get children to
understand road risks. The young child sitting in the back seat of his parents' car, observes their
behaviours, driving style and values and later will be able to have the same behaviours, driving
style and values as his parents. Peer grouping is another area of learning. Young people who
bond with peers who engage in dangerous behaviours are likely to engage in these same
dangerous behaviours themselves.

Religious beliefs can be at the origin of non-compliance or compliance with risk taking from
nurses. Some individuals who believe in God may be led to neglect management measures
thinking that God will protect them from the risk of road accident. Others on the other hand,
will consider that belief in God leads to a God’ fearing and therefore avoid behaviours that can
be considered deviant.

People’s ideas of sickness, health, and cure differ and are associated with fundamental
principles of beliefs. Patients and relatives bring with them to the hospital traditional medicines
and occult caring practice. In Cameroon, cultural beliefs result in greater use of traditional
medicine than of western medicine

Beliefs can influence risk-taking among health care workers in the sense that they do not believe
in certain topics about the evolution of science. E.g. religions that refuse blood transfusion on
the pretext that blood contains the soul, so it is not appropriate to transform the soul of one
individual into another. Also there are religions that discriminate in the care of certain patients,
especially women who are delivered by men or even consulted in a gynaecological. Also beliefs
that if someone, precisely the nursing staff, does not have a certain spiritual dimension, they
cannot do surgical care.
Several other factors may be responsible for the lack of risk-taking by caregivers because of
their belief that the nurse is unable to provide emergency care before the doctor arrives. The
belief that the doctor's approval is required before any risk is taken even if that period of brief
waiting may put the patient's life at risk, is necessary.

Beliefs in Cameroon such as; "the doctor is always right" when the doctor is human and can
perfectly well make mistakes are beliefs frequently found in hospitals in Cameroon today. This
very often prevents risk-taking by carers who feel that if they ever change the doctor's order (an
order potentially capable of destroying the patient's life) then they are disobeying the order of
their supervisor.