Health Education Process
A. ASSESSING THE LEARNER
Assessment of needs is the initial step in the educational process as its helps validate the
need for learning and the approach to be used in designing learning experiences.
• DETERMINANTS OF LEARNING
- Nursing assessment of needs, readiness, and styles of learning is the first and most important
step in instructional design—but it is also the step most often neglected.
Three Determinants:
I.
Learning Needs
- what the learner needs to know; to discover the extent of instruction.
- Defined as gaps in knowledge that exists between a desired level of performance and the
actual level of performance.
Important steps in the assessment of learning needs:
1. Identify the learner. The development of formal and informal education programs for
patients and their families, nursing staff, or students must be based on accurate
identification of the learner.
2. Choose the right setting. Establish a trusting environment to assure privacy and
confidentiality to the learners.
3. Collect data on the learner. Once the learner is identified, the educator can determine
characteristic needs of the population by exploring typical health problems or issues of
interest to that population.
4. Include the learner as a source of information. Learners are usually the most important
source of data in defining their own problems and needs.
5. Involve members of the healthcare team. Nurses are not the sole teachers, and they
must remember to collaborate with other members of the healthcare team for a richer
assessment of learning needs.
6. Prioritize needs. Maslow’s (1970) hierarchy of human needs may help the educator
prioritize identified learning needs.
7. Determine availability of educational resources.
8. Assess demands of the organization.
9. Take time-management issues into account.
Methods to Assess Learning Needs:
1. Informal Conversations
- The nurse relies on active listening.
- Learners reveal information about their perceived learnings by posing open-ended
questions.
2. Structured Interviews
- Nurse asks a direct and predetermined questions to gather information.
- Interviews yield answers that may reveal uncertainties, conflicts, inconsistencies,
unexpected problems, anxieties, fears, and present knowledge base.
3. Focus Groups
- Involve 4 to 12 potential learners, led by a facilitator, to identify different points of view or
knowledge about a certain topic.
4. Self-Administered Questionnaires
- One of the most common form is the checklist which obtains the learner’s written
responses to questions about learning needs.
- Easy to administer, provide more privacy than interviews, and easy to tabulate data.
5. Written Pretests
- Given before teaching to help identify the knowledge level of potential learner regarding a
particular subject and assist in identifying specific needs of the learner.
6. Observations
- Observing health behaviors in several different time periods can help to determine
established patterns of behavior.
7. Patient Charts
- Create patterns from physicians’ progress notes, nursing care plans, nurses’ notes, and
discharge planning forms that reveal learning needs.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
II. Readiness To Learn
- When the learner is receptive to learning
- learner demonstrates interest in learning the type or degree of information necessary to
maintain optimal health or to become more skillful in a job.
- It is the responsibility of the educator to discover through assessment exactly when
patients are ready to learn and what they want to learn.
The health educator must:
• Adapt with the content to be learned to fit with what the learner is ready to learn.
• Understand first what needs to be taught and be competent in collecting and validating
information.
• Done prior to the time when actual learning is to occur. If the learner is not ready, the
information will not be absorbed.
• Give thought as to what is required of the learner—that is, what needs to be learned, what the
learning objectives should be, and in which domain and at what level of learning these
objectives should be classified.
Types of readiness to learn: (PEEK)
P = Physical Readiness
• Measure of ability. Measures the strength, flexibility, and endurance, as well as the visual
and auditory acuity to perform movements that affect the ability to learn.
• Complexity of task. The nurse educator must take into account the difficulty level of the
subject or task to be mastered by the learner. Variations will affect the extent to which
behavioral changes are necessary in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.
• Environmental effects. An appropriate environment will help keep the learner’s interest and
attention in learning, might as well avoid any types of interference such as high levels of
noise.
• Health status. Healthy learners have the energy available and present comfort for
learning.Learners who are acutely ill tend to focus their energies on the physiological and
psychological demands of their illness.
• Gender. According to research, women respond more to medical care and avoid risk to
their health than men. This behavior is thought to be socially induced because of the
attention paid to increase a healthier lifestyle as well as the gender roles in the home and
the workplace.
E = Emotional Readiness
• Anxiety level. Anxiety levels greatly influences the performance of cognitive, affective, and
psychomotor level. It may or may not hinder an individual in learning and performing new
skills.
• Support system. Composed of family, friends, significant others who increase security and
emotional readiness. A strong support system decreases anxiety, while the lack of one
increases anxiety levels.
• Motivation. Motivation together with interest and emotional readiness piques the learner to
achieve a task leading to a meaningful teaching-learning experiences. The level of
motivation is related to what an individual expect from oneself.
• Risk-taking behavior. Developing strategies to reduce the risk in the choices requires
decisions among the worst, best, and most probable case scenario until it is recognized as
an acceptable choice.
• Frame of mind. Meeting basic human needs such as food, warmth, comfort, and safety as
well as psychosocial needs of acceptance and security to determine his or her readiness to
learn.
• Development stage. Readiness to learn is associated when a child reach the peak in
human development to be able to cope better with the real-life task and apply knowledge
based on past experiences.
E = Experiential Readiness
- refers to the learner’s past experiences with learning and willingness take risks in
overcoming problems and accomplishing new tasks.
• Level of aspiration. Short- or long-term goals established by the learners that influence
their motivation to pursue an output and achieve satisfaction.
• Past coping mechanism. Coping mechanisms are identified how it was dealt in the past
and determine the effectivity even in present learning situations.
• Cultured background. To assess and acknowledge different cultural perspectives in
determining the readiness to learn.
• Locus of Control. A learner’s motivation to learn; comes in two types:
‣ Internal locus of control - patients are internally motivated to learn; ready to learn when
they feel a need to know about something.
‣ External locus of control - externally motivated; someone must encourage them to
learn something.
• Orientation. A person’s point of view; two types:
‣ Parochial orientation - close-minded, conservative in their approach to new situations,
less willing to learn a new material, and place more trust in physicians.
‣ Cosmopolitan orientation - have a worldly perspective, receptive to new ideas and
opportunities to learn new ways of doing things.
K = Knowledge Readiness
- learner’s present knowledge base, the level of learning capability, and the preferred
style of learning.
• Present knowledge base. Amount of knowledge an individual already has and proficiency
in performing tasks.
• Cognitive ability. The learner’s extent of processing information by understanding,
memorizing, recalling, and material recognition (which are considered at lower level of
learning) until able to demonstrate problem solving, concept formation, and application of
information.
• Learning disabilities. Deficits caused by mental retardation may require special or
innovative approaches to instruction to sustain readiness to learn.
• Learning styles. Assessing the learner’s preferred learning style in which one may learn
best will help the educator provide teaching methods or materials that meet the needs of
learners as well as increase their readiness to learn.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
III. Learning Styles
- ways of an individual to process information.
Types of Learning Styles:
VARK learning style was introduce by Neil D. Flemming and Coleen E. Mills in 1992.
V - Visual
• Information were depicted through meaningful symbols, illustrations, charts, diagrams,
photos or videos;
• Process information as a whole than by piece;
• Best described as visual learners.
A - Auditory
• Process information through hearing;
• Opt to take down notes during class, therefore less engaged in their class;
• Learn best through discussions in groups and reading their written work aloud to
themselves helps them to think it through.
R - Reading/Writing
• Learns best from information presented in class in form of handouts or PPT presentations;
• Encourage taking down notes during lecture hours which helps in processing information
and recalling it afterwards.
K - Kinesthetics
• Also called tactile mode;
• Learners are hands-on and active in participating in lessons physically which brings out
the best in their educational process;
• Engages all senses in the process of learning;
• Strive in skill-based activities.
Reference:
http://www.ifeet.org/files/-Susan_Bacorn_Bastable-_Nurse_as_Educator_Princip.pdf