Nurse Education in Cambodia.

An excellent young nurse in Cambodia starts teaching.

Teaching may be carried out using the same stages as the nursing process. This helps nurses to carry out teaching as a purposeful activity, and not just as an aside to normal practice. In common with the nursing process a rationale should also be given for the interventions carried out.

Assessment

The needs of the learner should first be assessed. The knowledge base and experience of the teacher should also be taken into account. The teacher should not attempt any topic for which they feel they have an inadequate knowledge base. There is no more scope for bluffing or guess work in nurse education than there is in clinical practice. Ausubel provided a single principle upon which the assessment phase may be based, "The most important factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows, ascertain this and teach him/her accordingly". This principle demonstrates the importance of education being an interactive process with the learner. If the learners pre-existing knowledge and attitudes are not known to the teacher then the material may not interest the learner by being too simple. However if the material covered is too complex for the individuals stage in the learning process, it may lose him or her.

Planning

This involves deciding what needs to be achieved and how. The time required to meet a particular objective and the environment required should also be planned. A full lesson plan or scheme of work will not always be used, however some should be prepared as this is a useful exercise. The planning phase may also involve the teacher learning or revising some of the lesson content. A good facilitator of learning will be familiar with the material as well as presenting it in an interesting way. These two attributes of a good teacher were identified by Marson who pointed out that the two factors effecting the quality of teaching are; "the teachers ability and understanding of the subject, and the ability to form relationships and create a learning environment". Aims and objectives may be formulated at this stage of the teaching process. An aim describes the broad declaration of intent, or where you want to get to. In behavioral terms an objective describes the particular things a learner can do at the end of a learning experience which they could not do at the beginning. However the term learning outcome is more commonly used today as this may include all the products of learning, such as understanding and attitude formation. So learning is not limited to behavior change. A normal topic may be covered in one or two aims and six to twelve objectives. The teacher or facilitator must assess if the material can be covered in one session or whether more are required.

Implementation

This stage varies a lot depending on the teaching method chosen. It will also vary with the learning preferences of the student. Individuals learn in different ways, hence the emergence of various styles of learning. Just as nursing care needs to be individualised so learning should also be tailored to the individual learner as far as possible. Perhaps the most important principle in this stage of the teaching process is very simple, it is provided by Richard Verner, "talk with people not at them". This illustrates the importance of receiving on-going feedback throughout a session and using this to control progress. It should be remembered that the teacher should be a facilitator and motivator. If the learners are facilitated to read a book or article then effective learning can also take place.

Evaluation

Do not forget this stage, but I have run out of space.