Healthcare curriculum design and implementation

¶ … Curriculum Design

ISSUES AND TRENDS IN CURRICULUM DESIGN

The obj3ective of this study is to review and research issues and trends in curriculum design relating to healthcare and to elaborate on recommendations dealing with the issues and in view of the trends.

Gone are the days in education when the issues were simple and the lessons followed course since in today's society there are healthcare issues such as AIDS, premarital sex and needed birth control measures as well as other non-sexually related diseases including cancer and other health issues. The curriculum for healthcare education is a touchy issues because of the various religion, political, social, and familial values that exist in a diverse society with many races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. For this reason, the educator in healthcare must understand the volatile ground on which curriculum design may tread and the various view of parents, communities, as well as religious and political leaders in the community.

I. The Literature

Albert (2007) reports that he medical education literature describes 4 main elements of curriculum development that should be used: (1) curriculum design, which comprises the content and organization; (2) instructional design, which comprises teaching and learning strategies; (3) the assessment of learners; and (4) evaluation of curriculum." (p.1) The last and critical element as noted by Albert is the evaluation of the curriculum. Historically and traditionally the content of curriculum has been teacher driven most particularly becaus3e teacher "clearly have an interest and a stake in delivering what they feel to be a high quality product." (Albert, 2007, p. 1) it was noted by Saxton and Olsen (1994) the health educators have "historically advocated both health education and healthy environments for students" and specifically noted is that health care education in the 1960s was focused on the exploration of the "status of student's health knowledge and behavior in grades 6, 9 and 12.." (Albert, 1994, p.2 ) It is reported that there were 17,000 students from 36 U.S. states that participated and conclusions were shocking including that home life did not provide encouragement for the practice of good health habits and the instructional methods were not effective. In addition parents and the community were highly resistive to specific topics about and there was no coordination of the health education program at all levels of the school and moreover, professional preparation of staff was very poor. The work of Stevenson (2010) is notable in that Stevenson share the facts in the work entitled "Educational Trends Shaping School Planning, Design, Cosntr7uction, Funding and Operation that "Families living in poverty often have much higher incidences of: a) parents being under-educated; b) only one parent living at home; c) few informal educational resources or opportunities for learning available at home; d) limited health care, with little or none being preventive; and e) low expectations regarding school completion (p.3 ) What this all means is that parents who had failed to receive proper health education are very poorly prepared to teach their children good health practices and this means more and more children are arriving at school without having practiced good hygiene, who do not know the important of washing their hands, covering their mouth when they cough and that are poorly educated on sexually related health care issues, proper nutrition, practicing good care of their oral health and many children likely arrive unclean, experiencing poor nutritional intake and making students less apt to pay attention in school. These issues in combination with the more tenuous issues of designing health care curriculum results in teachers, educators, and curriculum designers unsure which direction to head to ensure that these students receive the information that they require to navigate through the world society safely and to ensure that their poor healthcare practices do not affect other children throughout the school and community.

II. Analysis

Today's educators have a world of information at their fingertips via the World Wide Web and through this venue and meeting with others in the community including parents, social workers, and other youth-related and informed individuals can has out the more touchy and contradictory issues while ensuring that the present healthcare educational needs are met for children from very diverse race, ethnicity, socio-economic, political and religious backgrounds. Stevenson reports that the4 number of youth in the United States are increasing dramatically and the student population becoming more diverse there are more older citizens in the United States and this means more individuals who will require health care workers to care for them in the future of health care. There are more and more special needs children being educate4d in regular classroom settings. All this combined with a larger spread in the teacher-pupil ratio means that technology must be utilized by teachers in today's schools to educate, inform and emphasize classroom education. There is no pat answer as to how to approach healthcare curriculum in today's schools but there are something worth considering. For example, the increase in t3he elderly populating means that nursing homes will be full and there will be many of the aging baby boomers living at home with their family at an older age. Therefore, healthcare curriculum must necessarily educate today's students on these issues and how to assist older adults with health care issues. In addition, more healthcare workers are need therefore, the healthcare curriculum in today's schools should create interest among students about healthcare issues and engage students in healthcare learning to motivate them to enter the field of healthcare.