5-10
AIMING TEACHING AT WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT
Many instructors waste a lot of time teaching relatively unnecessary knowledge and
skills:
• Some devote long hours to anatomy and physiology.
• Others give long descriptions of diagnoses and treatments. (Time would be
better spent helping health workers learn to look up the same information in their
books during role plays and in clinical practice.)
• Still others spend days teaching minor skills, such as tying complicated bandages.
(It would be more useful to help health workers think of what they might use
when the bandage supply runs out!)
When teaching, it is easy to go into more detail than necessary, and in doing so,
to lose sight of what is most important. Health workers cannot learn everything.
Medicine, public health, teaching methods, understanding of traditions, and
development of social awareness are all important. But to learn everything about these
fields is impossible—even in a lifetime! Some form of selection is essential.
It may help, in deciding
what to teach and what not to
teach, to determine whether
each aspect is . . .
• essential to know,
• useful to know, or
• nice to know.
Your main aim is to cover
what is essential. Since time
is limited, you need to aim
carefully. Try not to spend too
much time on what is less
important.
But remember, the human
and social aspects of health
care are just as important as
the technical information and
skills.
Aim your teaching at
what is most essential.
TESTING OUR TEACHING:
For each subject, each class, and each point you teach, it helps to ask yourself:
• Why am I teaching this?
• In what way does what I am teaching prepare
health workers to perform a skill, or to work effectively in
the community?
• Could this time be better used to teach something
more important-or to teach the same thing more effectively?
F o r m o r e i d e a s about evaluation of classes and teaching, see page 9-14.