Promoting Healthy Lifestyle in Children: Nursing Staff and Teachers in Partnership at School

Saturday, 27 July 2019

Thelma Leite de Araujo, PhD
Department of Nursing, Federal University of Ceara, Fortaleza, Brazil
Luiza Marques Cavalcante, MSc
Department of Nursing, Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil
Nila Larisse Silva de Albuquerque, MSN
Department of Nursing, University Federal of Ceara, Fortaleza, Brazil
Nathalia Costa Gonzaga Saraiva, PhD
Hospital Universitário Ana Bezerra, Santa Cruz, Brazil

Purpose: This study aims to assess a training session with teachers of children’s education to use a serial album for children aged from 7 to 10 years addressing the topic of prevention and control of body weight.

Methods: The serial album was previously developed and validated by a Brazilian nurse (Saraiva, Medeiros, & Araujo, 2018) and it consists of pictures and scripts focusing on the importance of healthy eating habits and practice of physical activities. It is an evaluation research, developed in two elementary public schools of a Brazilian state capital from September to December 2017. The teacher’s training session was conducted by one of the authors of this study and included eight teachers of children’s education. They were trained to use the serial album in a 60 minutes session which included questions & answers to discuss doubts regarding the educational material. At that time, the trainer applied a pretest to the eight teachers regarding information taught in the training. Subsequently, teachers used the serial album during one of their classes, which was recorded on video. After they had done the class using the serial album, teachers met the trainer and filled out the posttest. Kirkpatrick (2010) was adopted as a theoretical and methodological reference to elaborate the training and to evaluate its effectiveness. Three of four levels of evaluation proposed by the author were adopted in this study: reaction to the training, evaluation of learning and performance. The first one was carried out to identify how teachers evaluated the training, considering facilities and communication capacity of the trainer. Evaluation of learning was conducted by analyzing the difference of knowledge presented in pretest and posttest. According to Kirkpatrick, the analysis of teachers’ learning after the training was carried out through an attributes system, with four parameters: Efficacy (E), False positive rate (FP), False Negative Rate (RN) and Trend (T). Finally, teachers performance was evaluated by nurses experts according to a script previously validated. Experts nurses watched the video and filled out the form. The study met ethical principles of research with human beings and it was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Federal University of Ceara.

Results: In the evaluation of reaction to the training, the following items were considered excellent by all the teachers: Evaluation on the subject, Evaluation of the facilitator regarding the use of support material, Maintenance of a friendly and caring attitude and Clarity in the information granted. The following items received excellent evaluation by majority, but without unanimity: Facilities, Schedule, Facilitator set goal, Facilitator communication with group. The considerations made by the participants support which aspects of the training need to be improved to be better evaluated at all levels and to reach the learning proposal. Macena & Mota study (2017) shows that higher levels of perception regarding the contribution of the content of the training to the accomplishment of its attributions are associated with higher levels of satisfaction with the training. According to the efficacy parameter, in the evaluation of learning it was observed that the majority of participants had an acceptable level of knowledge of the subject even before the training, but the number of teachers in this level increased after the training. It suggests a general increase of knowledge and reflect positive evaluation of learning. In Araujo, Abbad & Freitas study (2017), the trainers of three trainings believed that some characteristics of the trainees facilitate or block the learning process, as previous knowledge of the participant and the identification with the theme. In the evaluation of the general teachers’ performance in the presentation of figures of the album, only the presentation of the cover obtained evaluation below the expected. In the presentations of the scripts, the majority of the participants obtained an evaluation of performance within the expected.

Conclusion: We concluded that the training enabled the qualification of the teachers to obtain good performance in the serial album application, providing knowledge for the use of the educational material with in school setting and that nursing can and should carry out interprofessional partnerships as a positive resource for health promotion. In addition, we recommended that training regarding partnerships between health professionals and teachers must adopt specific references for organization and evaluation of its results.