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Step 4. Listing appropriate areas of study
After looking carefully at the problems you want to cover in the course (based on
people’s needs), the next step is to consider:
What skills, knowledge, and practice will health
workers need to help people solve these problems?
The skills and knowledge health workers need to learn should be carefully
analyzed (see Task Analysis, pages 5-7 to 5-9). Skills in both curative and
preventive medicine will be important. But so will skills—and practice—in
community organizing, teaching (of both adults and children), problem analysis,
record keeping, and so on. Some programs include certain agricultural skills,
veterinary skills, and even basic dentistry.
One of the most important
areas of study for health workers
concerns the way people relate
to each other: Why people
act and do things as they do!
So health worker training
should include learning about
‘group dynamics’, and even
‘consciousness raising’ or
‘building social awareness.
One community-based program in the
Philippines spends more than half of training
time helping health workers to gain an
understanding of ‘what makes people tick’.
Based on the priorities of
local problems, list all the
different areas of learning
or activity you think should
be covered in the course. The
subjects chosen must be realistic
in terms of needs, resources,
and time available for training.
Then arrange these subjects
in sensible groups or ‘areas of
study’. It will help if you organize
these into 3 general categories:
• PREVENTIVE
• CURATIVE
• COMMUNITY OR SOCIAL
Drawing by Lino C. Montebon in Ang Maayong
Lawas Maagum, a Philippine equivalent of
Where There Is No Doctor.
On the next page is an example of a blank worksheet for planning the content
of a training course. This kind of sheet has been used by Project Piaxtla in
Mexico. Following the blank worksheet is a copy of the same sheet with a list of
possible study areas for health worker training. You are welcome to use this as a
checklist. But probably you will want to omit some items and add others, according
to your local situation.