This article presents the Diarrheal illness lesson plans for staff development, patient education, and family education. To ensure the effectiveness of the teaching plans, clear instructional goals are defined in each of the lessons. The plans specify the sequence of educational activities, instructional methods, the amount of time allotted to each activity, the resources employed, and the ways by which the activities will be evaluated.
Medical personnel working in diarrhea disease public health education should be familiar with the concepts and practical abilities required to educate the public about the illness's causes, spread, and prevention. Effective training is needed for these health workers particularly those working on pediatric sections. Besides, the medical practitioners taking part in different training courses on diarrhea prevention and management among children would significantly find it helpful to be part of the training.
The health practitioners lesson plan target to improve the learning capacity of staff on diarrhea. They are required to understand the causes and the various ways expected to be adopted to prevent the disease (Guba and Lincoln, 2005). It aims to enhance the practitioner’s awareness of the disease by focusing on a comprehensive understanding of practical cases of diarrhea among the affected patients.
The anticipated behavioral objectives of the lesson plan based on Bloom’s taxonomy involve the improvement of knowledge and theoretical awareness of diarrhea among the medical staff. Secondly the plan seeks to alleviate the skills of the practitioners to carry out public health campaigns to sensitize the community about the disease and the appropriate prevention measures. Thirdly, the plan targets to instill among the healthcare workers affective goals that improve their interest and value to constantly take part in the prevention and treatment of the disease.
In this lesson plan the healthcare workers would be taken through the basic information of diarrhea. During the training, major focus will be directed towards ensuring that a clear understanding of the disease is made (House, 2005). The first one week, the health workers should understand the accompanying local practices and beliefs to guide appropriately on the best teaching techniques and methods that are culturally relevant to target community and patients. During this training, health care staff would be sensitized about the past public campaigns that have been carried out by health workers with limited training on use of basic educational aids and teaching techniques and thus alternative new approaches that would guarantee success would be offered.
During the second week the health workers would be trained on how to initiate health education with the community. This will be achieved by offering some examples of ideas that shows the best ways of how to teach and develop simple teaching aids. It targets to instill the concept that “learning by doing” is the best method to teach (Walker, 2005). The importance of using manuals and books would be emphasized when handling patients with higher educational level, however, they would be sensitized that this mode of teaching would not be applicable to communities and patients who cannot read and write.
The objectives of the course will be evaluated based on the educational level of the participants. The process of evaluation shall first be done by human resource department who will approve only qualified applicants. To ensure the training achieves the set objectives, the medical staff that specializes in pediatrics would be recruited since they have prior understanding of the disease. Before the training is concluded the participants would be evaluated both theoretically and practically to gauge their understanding of the important concepts about the disease.
Patients’ education lesson plan
The lesson plan focused on patients target to educate them about diarrhea, its causes, symptoms and some of the control measures. Particularly, these lessons are set to enhance the teaching of patients admitted for cases of diarrhea. It is important for the patients to receive appropriate teachings and care that is set to help them get proper treatment. By stepping up measures to educate the patients on the nature of diarrhea, the increase likelihood of disease spread from one person to another will be reduced.
The patients are set to be sensitized on the general hygiene requirements to prevent further infection of the disease. They will be expected to learn and practice good hygienic skills that guarantee safety and limited risk to harmful disease causing microorganisms. Besides, the lesson plan target to instill a culture of maintaining cleanliness at all times among the patients by developing keen interest on the disease prevention.
The teachings would take a period of one week. The content would entail a general overview of the disease, description of the causative agents, disease symptoms, the spread, and the control measures. During the first two days the medical staff would present the general definition and concepts important to establish a good background of the disease. Patients would be introduced to epidemiology of the disease, its prevalence and how the disease has become one of the leading killer ailments resulting on high number of preventable death, particularly among children in the developing countries. In this lesson, comprehensive review of the disease will be made to acquaint the patients the basic factors that facilitate the disease spread. Therefore, this lesson would improve the disease awareness among the patients.
The next three days structures the lesson plan to focus on sensitizing the patients about the definitive symptoms of diarrhea. Patients should understand definitive symptoms of diarrhea such as fever, watery stool, bloating, abdominal pain, nausea, blood in the stool and urgent need to have a bowel movement. Well elaborate teaching aids would be used to deepen the patients’ grasp and appreciation of the visible nature of symptoms among the affected patients. Power point presentation would be used to enhance display of patients suffering from diarrhea.
The last two days would be used to teach the patients appropriate time to seek medical intervention. Key parameters patients’ should understand include when the diarrhea progressed past two days, when they become dehydrated, experience severe abdominal pain, bloody stool and fever above 39 C (Walker, 2005). When patients observe these signs they would be advised to seek immediately medical attention. Besides, they would be sensitized on the available measures that they should embrace to reduce the risk of disease spread.
At the end of the lesson the patients would be expected to answer some basic questions about the teachings offered. The readiness to learn based on the patients’ educational level would be accessed during the training. The standard of development of the patients would be evaluated to ascertain their capability to put into practice the teachings offered. Also, this evaluation is important because it will single out the patients who may be willing to implement the concepts but lack the ability to do so. These lessons target to gauge the participant’s level of development and thus establish partnerships with various organizations to assist them.
Family education lesson plan
The lesson plan target to educate family members on the causes, symptoms, spread and control measures of diarrhea. It is focused to improve disease awareness among the parents and older siblings in the family so as to be able to observe symptoms of the disease among the children and facilitate their early treatment. The teaching plan is tailored to reduce diarrhea spread among the family members once one family member gets infected with the disease. It aims at reducing diarrhea spread at the family level through taking proactive measures that ascertain the possible causes of diarrhea and ultimately adopt appropriate preventive measures.
The lesson plan targets to sensitize the family members the conditions and certain diseases that cause diarrhea. The objectives of the plan include making the learners understand the types of viruses, parasites and bacteria that cause the diarrhea ailment (Johannesson & Popkewitz, 2001). Also, the plan will make it a top priority to train the family members to adopt appropriate hygiene and high standard of cleanliness to reduce the chances of coming in contact with disease-causing microorganism. Therefore the lesson plan target to arouse interest of the family members to play a leading role in implementing preventive measures to reduce the outbreak of the disease.
This lesson plan is structured to be conducted within a period of one week. The first two days will be focused on giving the overview of the disease, the symptoms, causative agents and the mechanism that facilitate its spread. These teachings will offer good introductory concepts that would guide the understanding of the disease.
The next two days would be used to acquaint the learners the different types of viruses, parasites, and bacteria that cause diarrhea. At the end of the lesson the learners are expected to identify the main types of viruses causing the disease such as viral hepatitis, Norwalk virus, and cytomegalovirus. Besides, they should understand diarrhea-causing parasites such as cryptosporidium and Giardia lamblia and bacterial diarrhea causing microorganism such as the Eschirichia coli, campylobacter, shigella and salmonella. This understanding would help the learners understand the wide scope of the possible areas that should be avoided usually inhabited by these microorganisms.
During the last three days, the medical staff involved in offering the teaching would train the learners on the possible medications and other factors that cause diarrhea. The learners would be sensitized about some antibiotics that cause diarrhea such as antacids laced with magnesium and cancer drugs. Further, the family members would be introduced to other causative factors such as lactose intolerance and use of artificial sweeteners. To facilitate the understanding of these lessons, teaching aids as well as use of up to date pictures would be adopted during the training process.
At the end of the lesson, the family members would be evaluated on how they have understood the theoretical concepts of the disease by being asked to provide answers to basic questions covered during the training.
References
Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and
emerging confluences. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (pp. 191–215). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
House, E. R. (2005). Qualitative evaluation and changing social policy. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S.
Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (pp. 191–215). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Johannesson, I. A., & Popkewitz, T. S. (2001). Pierre Bourdieu, 1930-. In J. A. Palmer (Ed.),
Fifty modern thinkers on education (pp. 229–234). New York: Routledge.
Walker, R. I. (2005). Considerations for development of whole cell bacterial vaccines to prevent
diarrheal diseases in children in developing countries. Vaccine, 23(26), 3369-3385.
