I'd like to welcome you to the course

"Training Methods in Continuing Education for Health Workers".

This is Bill Brieger,

I will be approaching the course from my experience having worked at

the African Regional Health Education Center at the University of Ibadan for 26 years.

We were involved in very low tech type of training, village health workers,

driving out an hour or two into the bush and bringing along

our own flip charts using locally available materials,

obviously not having electricity and video.

Working with the distance education people, of course,

this is the exact opposite we've been working with

very high tech Internet-based and computer-based learning.

So it's an interesting contrast.

So many of my examples will focus on how we've

managed in low resource context to conduct training for health workers,

continuing education for health workers.

We will have a section in lecture nine on internet

learning that Karen Sharon from our department will present to share her experiences,

so we will have a look at that.

Our first lecture is divided into four sections.

Section A looks at the definitions

of training and organizational issues involved in training.

Section B, looks at

training specifically in the context of organizational management and programming.

We have Section C that looks at training policy and functions.

And finally Section D describes continuing education.

We said in Section A,

we are concerned about defining the context in which training takes place.

You can see that training is part of continuing education.

Continuing education is required of all health workers.

Policies change, procedures change,

community needs change, and on a daily basis.

If possible, health workers need to be aware of these changes and

find ways of updating their needs and their skills.

So training, formal training is one way of doing that.

The issue of continuing education is one of the many components

of managing human resources or personnel management within an organization,

and finally personnel management itself is part of

overall organizational management that considers how

the organization uses resources to reach its goals.

Training itself is a set of formal learning activities.

It enables future or current health workers to acquire knowledge,

skills, and attitudes needed to perform a specific job within the work place.

We are concerned here not with basic education of health workers, basic training,

but with in-service education,

in-service training which is part of continuing education.

We're also concerned as I mentioned before,

with training of health workers and

volunteers as it affects delivery of services in the community,

as it affects the community's ability to work on and solve its own health problems.

So while training does help an organization achieve

its goals by ensuring that health workers have the most up-to-date skills,

it's not just limited to the formal employees of an agency.

Whether it's a health department or an NGO that's delivering health services.

So we're concerned also about training community volunteers,

peer educators, and outreach workers of various kinds.

We know that in any given community,

many organizations impact on health.

The health department can't reach everyone.

So people in the health field need to be able to

train teachers agriculture, extension workers,

and as I mentioned community volunteers,

so training is a skill that helps us as

health workers reach out and have a wider effect in the community.

As I mentioned, continuing education is broad based, ongoing,

training is one activity within continuing education which is both formal and informal.

Helping health workers revise skills things that they learned in their basic nursing

or health inspector training or medical training change they need to update this.

New innovations come along in the health field, new diagnostic tools,

new data collection procedures and health workers need to

update themselves to be able to use these new tools and skills.

So we mentioned before,

continuing education is part of managing the human resources within an organization.

Personnel management is obtaining and organizing and motivating

the human resources that are required by the organization to achieve its goals,

carry out its programs.

It's also concerned with developing an organizational climate

and management style that will promote effective cooperation,

effort, trust among all the people,

issues that affect people's performance,

its job satisfaction or remuneration, benefits.

So training again is one component of this,

but management involves many issues and we won't be dealing with all of that,

but one to be sure that we recognize that

training does contribute to personnel management.

Personnel management also helps organizations meet

their legal obligations and social responsibilities,

making sure they do everything from paying the Social Security taxes for their employees,

that they collect unemployment benefits,

that they provide medical care to employees.

So again this is a broader field.

The components of Personnel Management include those activities within

an organization that are geared toward recruiting

and maintaining a high quality of human resources.

Again an organization cannot achieve its goals without employees,

and many organizations in the health field

without involvement of well-trained community volunteers.

This workforce needs not only to have the ability and skills to accomplish the goals,

carry out the programs of the organization but also must

have the motivation to do their work.

Two categories of Personnel Management that we're

concerned about are their conditions of service, and job performance.

Conditions of service involve a variety of things,

obviously your basic salary scale,

and remuneration, the location of the time and work,

specifications about how one gets promotion when one's do for promotion,

how transfers are handled,

how separation from duty has handled,

all of these things are spelled out in organizational policies,

performance appraisal, discipline, are part

of spelling out how that happens as part of condition of service.

Another crucial component is benefits such as health care, insurance, retirement plans,

entitlements, continuing education for yourself,

possibly tuition allowances for your children.

Part of the condition service of course is the actual health and safety of the work site.

What should be guaranteed to employees.

And finally, conditions of service may include such things as allowance for Hazard pay,

vacations, and other kinds of special activities.

A second major component is job performance,

and personnel policy should define job descriptions,

and responsibilities, job qualifications, who can apply.

Many of you of course have look through

the American Journal of Public Health or Nation's Health or other journals or on

the website and you'll see of course that it says that

a person would need a certain degree or certain number of years of working experience.

Personnel policy should also defined relationships in the work setting,

who supervises whom, who reports to whom.

And again job performance includes specification of

those activities that will enhance performance such as continuing education,

and the process of supervisory evaluations and feedback.

The concerns about performance relate more directly to training.

Training can influence how an employee carries out his or her job.

The other components that we're concerned about in terms of conditions

of service although they will certainly affect morale and performance,

are not necessarily subject to amelioration by training.

We have a chart that does show the division of

concepts within personnel management, human resource management.

We can see clearly that conditions of service including salaries, benefits,

discipline are different than personnel development,

where we're concerned about improving and maintaining

the quality of employee performance,

the employees' skills, knowledge and attitudes toward the work.

We need clear job descriptions as we've mentioned,

and in the area that we're going to be focusing on in this course continuing education.

Continuing education has many forms,

some of these are seen here,

supervisory visits can be educational,

staff meetings, information can be exchanged,

self learning is important,

are there opportunities and resources available for employees to read.

Do they have access to journals?

And then in-service training itself,

a variety of workshops seminars and short courses.

So all of these are components of continuing education.

Again, the focus of the course ultimately is on helping

you learn how to develop in-service training activities in your organization.

Specifically, we hope during the course that you will

identify some potential needs for continuing education,

and use that as a practical basis for developing your assignments during the course.

Well this brings us to the end of section A.

We'll look more specifically in the next sections about

the various components of organizational management and how training fits in.

Organizational Context For Training

Understanding and Strengthening Health Systems

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