Community Teaching Experience: Summary of the Teaching Plan - Essay Example

Community Teaching Experience Community Teaching Experience Summary of the Teaching Plan The community-teaching plan targeted the Hispanic community in the state of Arizona. The teaching program took place at the First Hispanic Baptist Church in Phoenix, AZ. The community-teaching program focused on the diabetes menace in the Hispanic community. The CDC asserts that the Hispanic community are becoming more vulnerable to diabetes than other Americans are. As such, the community requires urgent intervention. The intervention would work well if the community is enlightened on the illness, symptoms, possible diagnoses and medical solution to the disease. The education program targeted adults from aged 18 years to 75 years. The reason for the selection is that the people in the groups can comprehend the basics that will be taught and implement them. They then can transfer the knowledge to others in the community. The teaching involved dissemination of professional information to the attendees in the Hispanic language. Spanish was used since it is the first language of the target community. The motive was to enhance understanding of the issues and hence better outcomes. The process also involved question and answer sessions where people had the opportunity to ask various questions and clarifications on issues they find contentious. After the training, the attendees were required to answer basic questions regarding diabetes. The questions were both oral and written. The objective was to check the importance of the session to the community. The attendees were also be required to demonstrate to others what they have learned. Testing the ability to teach others tests the ability of the training to impact other people who will not attend the sessions. Epidemiological Rationale The Center for Disease and Control states that American Hispanics are at a greater risk of developing diabetic conditions than other white Americans. The CDC puts the prevalence of the disease among Hispanics as 66% higher than other white Americans. The CDC further estimates that 2%-10% of Hispanic mothers develop gestational diabetes (cdc.gov). The reasons for the conditions can be attributed to the functional health patterns of the community. During a pilot study, it was found out that most of the Hispanics are not physically active and do not consider nutrition as a health factor. According to Swain and Leutholtz (2007), people with type 2 diabetes heavily rely on diet and physical activity. Thus, the Spanish community is uninformed in matters concerning the mitigation of diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes has led to huge health and economic loss to the community. People with diabetes spend a lot of resources on medications. Thus, the disease ruins the social welfare in families and the community as a whole. Evaluation of Teaching Experience The teaching experience was satisfying and proved that a community can be united to tackle a health problem. I enjoyed the fact that people took the health issues seriously. The participants were also collaborative with the tutors, and they showed a lot of respect. The experience also taught me about community awareness of various diseases. The teaching session did not discriminate or profile any individual with a Hispanic origin. As such, I was able to experience the various reasoning of people with different economic, social and education backgrounds. However, they had the diabetes concern as a bonding factor. I was amused to find out that the all these people were willing to participate for the good of the community. The experience taught me that health is both an individual and communal concern. The people, who attended the session, had little or no information about the disease. Thus, they needed to be taught from scratch. A lot of time consumed on the introductions and the basics of diabetes. However, the time spent on the sections is worth it considering the results of the evaluation. Most people were able to answer questions regarding the content that had been covered in the session. As noted in the methodology, people were not discriminated on the basis of education. There were big differences in education that impacted individual understanding. Some people thought that we were wasting their time covering content they already knew. In addition, the understanding of participants varied. Since the aim of the teaching was to impact knowledge on how diabetes can be avoided at the individual level, all people had to understand the basics, which took time. The experience taught me that communities are willing to learn about their health and adjust accordingly. The people were willing to spend more tie just to understand more about Diabetes. I also learned that most diseases can be controlled by engaging the communities. The participants of the session are now capable of preventing diabetes, detecting it early and also know the treatment of the disease. Despite the many positive aspects of the teaching experience, there are few aspects that challenged the implementation of the community education. The teaching session had limited materials due to shortage of resources. The shortage was more pronounced in demonstration materials. People had to share the materials which could have reduced the effectiveness of such materials in teaching. Another challenge was the small number of the Hispanics that could be reached. The number of people was constrained by the seating capacity of the church hall, and most members were church members. The reasoning of the majority of people was that the teaching was a church event rather than a community awareness session. Community Response to Teaching Community health education is an important aspect of disease prevention and primary care (McKenzie, Pinger & Kotecki, 2011). People who are forearmed with information about a disease are better placed to mitigate it. In the Mexican community, diabetes is one of the most common diseases; thus, enabling them to manage their heath is an important step towards finding a solution. The teaching session was productive. The total number of participants was 386 out of a possible 400. The statistics prove that the community values their health and appreciate programs that can assist in this endeavor. Moreover, the conviction to get more information on diabetes indicates that the community fully understands the problem. Teaching methodology included lectures, pamphlets, and audiovisual materials. The participants were attentive and actively participated in every aspect of the session. Involvement of participants in the learning process increased the morale of the tutors since it was evident that the educative seminar was impacting the health of the community. The number of questions and the depth of individual questions gauged the understanding of the participants. I found out the participants were quite inquisitive of the disease and asked a lot of questions on every section. In fact, demonstrations and visual effects posing the reality of the disease only sated the inquisitive nature of the participants. The session was able to convince many people of the need to take charge of their health and avoid diabetes. Evaluation of the participants also proved the success of the program. After the session, majority of participants could answer basics questions regarding the disease and ways to mitigate it. Notably, the participants understood the impact of functional health patterns on the spread of diabetes among the Hispanics in the US. Thus, they are now better placed to understand the disease on aspects such as causes, symptoms, and treatment. The nursing professionals can then apply primary care in the community more effectively. Areas of Strengths and Areas of Improvement Finishing this assignment was a challenging task. However, the fact that I was able to pull it off implies that there are elements in which the group had advantages. Some of the aspects include the group speaking abilities. As noted in the proposal, the session relied mostly on lectures. The ability to speak and show prowess in the subject made the audience stick to the agenda of the meeting and always cheerful. This made the session lively and thus more productive. Another area of strength is that the topic under consideration was of interest to the community. The participants had individual interests in understanding diabetes. The situation gave me an easy time and acted as a crowd control tool. Thus, the ability to choose a topic that affects all the persons in attendance was a strength that enabled the success of the teaching session. Despite the success of the teaching assignment, lack of enough demonstration materials was a challenge. Most people had to share and thus hindered access to some people. In future, I will have to increase the materials to be proportional to the number of people attending the teaching session. In future, participants will be stratified according to their level of knowledge of the disease rather than working with the assumption that all members are at the same level as far as knowledge on diabetes is concerned. Conclusion Statistics show that the Hispanic community has the highest prevalence of diabetes in the US (cdc.gov). The problem is attributable to the functional health patterns of the community. Diabetes poses a real danger to the members of the community due to poor diet and lack of exercises. In this regard, the government and other non-governmental organization should take initiatives such as health education and promotion to enhance healthy living. Teaching sessions are ideal as they disseminate important information about the disease and thus empowering more people with knowledge to prevent the disease and control it at early stage References CDC Features - Diabetes Health and Hispanic Heritage Month. (n.d.). Retrieved January 16, 2015, from http://www.cdc.gov/Features/HispanicHealth/ McKenzie, J. F., Pinger, R. R., & Kotecki, J. E. (2011). An introduction to community health. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Swain, D. P., & Leutholtz, B. C. (2007). Exercise prescription: A case study approach to the ACSM guidelines. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Read More