Interactive workshop stresses teaching skills
January 1, 2000 5 minutes read
Interactive workshop stresses teaching skills
Variety makes the education come alive
(Editor’s note: Most patient education managers would agree that many staff members who are asked to teach patients have not been trained to do so. Therefore, they are offering opportunities for staff to learn valuable teaching techniques. This month, we launch a series of articles that profile innovative programs on teaching staff how to teach. We begin our series with a patient education workshop at the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics in Salt Lake City.)
A workshop to improve the teaching skills of clinicians at the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics in Salt Lake City seemed like a good idea. To make sure it would be well-received and tailored to staff needs, the patient education coordinator personally visited the department heads in 43 areas of the health system, including outlying clinics.
"I did the staff survey in person because I wanted to increase the visibility of my office, and I also wanted them to know I felt they were important," says Jackie A. Smith, PhD, patient education coordinator.
During the survey process, managers were asked what topics would be most beneficial to their staff and what would be most helpful to them in evaluating and monitoring their patient education efforts. Some of the topics mentioned that were later incorporated into the workshop were assessing readiness to learn, how to find resources, helping people with special needs such as a hearing impairment, teaching techniques, how to conduct a learning needs assessment, and ways to evaluate learning.
To make sure the needs of the patients were met in the workshop curriculum, the office of patient education created a patient survey and trained members of the Patient Education Clearinghouse Committee to conduct them. Ten interviewers surveyed 84 patients in one day about their patient education teaching and their learning needs. "The night before the patient interviews, we picked up census records so we had a good idea of who we were going to be interviewing," explains Smith.
Patients were asked such questions as what teaching methods staff had used to teach them, teaching topics covered by staff, and which disciplines did the teaching. (To review survey questions, see example inserted in this issue.)
The goal of the first two pilot workshops, conducted in September 1999, was to help participants obtain the knowledge and skills to optimize their patient teaching in the clinical setting. One of the first activities of the six-hour workshop was to have those in attendance name three things they wanted to gain from the session. Smith wrote their statements on sticky notes and put them on the wall. "We categorized them so we could be sure to hit the areas they wanted covered in the workshop," says Smith.
The morning session covered patient education principles, learning aids, teaching skills, and overcoming barriers to education. For example, information on improving retention of learning by using a variety of teaching methods was discussed. Also, the importance of learning styles was discussed and participants were asked to identify the way they learned best so they could better understand why the likelihood of learning is increased when this connection is made.
Following a short break, the session continued with information on creativity in teaching, humor in patient education, and teaching skills in practice.
To help workshop participants evaluate their creativity, Smith provided a case study of a patient who did not read well. She asked everyone to come up with ways to help the patient stick to a medication regimen using color codes and other creative methods. Also, she had them play a game where they pulled an object from a grab bag such as a clown wig, notepad, or stuffed animal. They were asked to talk about how they might use patient teaching time to enhance teaching in a fun way.
A short afternoon session following the lunch break covered writing and selecting patient education materials and locating materials on the Internet. This instruction included information on literacy levels and how to do a readability test on materials. "We went on-line with the computer to show participants how to access patient education materials from our patient education home page and locate information on the Web," says Smith. A wrap-up reviewed the items they had listed on sticky notes to make sure they had covered all the issues of interest to participants.
Teaching in a classroom setting was not covered specifically in the workshop curriculum. Instead, Smith would stop periodically and ask the group to pinpoint the teaching methods she had used, which included videos, games, handouts, role-playing, and small group discussion.
Promotion via unit managers
To get the word out to staff about the workshops, Smith sent a bulletin to unit managers as well as the workshop objectives and outline. She also asked them to post a flyer on the workshop. At the end of the workshop, participants were expected to have acquired the following:
• The ability to describe the importance of patient education in the clinical setting and demonstrate a working knowledge of patient education principles and their function in the health care setting.
• The ability to identify at least three barriers to learning and how to overcome them.
• The ability to recognize their own learning and teaching styles and describe the implications in the practice environment.
• The ability to define basic learning factors by age group and appropriate teaching techniques.
• The ability to demonstrate one-on-one teaching skills including assessment, planning teaching interventions, instruction, and evaluating learning.
• The ability to describe the advantages and disadvantages of using teaching tools such as videos, handouts, closed circuit TV, and the computer.
• The ability to list the factors that improve the quality of written patient education materials.
• The ability to locate and print out reliable patient education materials from the Internet.
• The ability to make a commitment to improve at least three areas of teaching over the next month.
The pilot workshop was so well-received that Smith plans to offer the curriculum once a month. She would also like to evaluate the long-term effects of this workshop. "In about six months, I would like to telephone the participants to see how they are doing on those things they said they were going to try to improve," she says.
[Editor’s note: Have you implemented some sort of program to help staff learn how to become better teachers in order to improve patient education? If so, please contact us so we might include you in this series of articles on teaching staff how to teach. Contact: Susan Cort Johnson, Editor, Patient Education Management, 9551 Butterfield Way #42, Sacramento, CA 95827. Telephone: (916) 362-0133. E-mail: suscortjohn@ earthlink.net.]
For more information on creating a workshop to instruct staff on adult learning methods, contact:
• Jackie A. Smith, PhD, Office of Patient Education, University of Utah Hospital, 50 North Medical Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84132. Telephone: (801) 581-4804. Fax: (801) 585-5280. E-mail: [email protected].
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