Teaching the teacher program to assist nurse managers to educate nursing staff in Ecuadorian hospitals

Continuing education for hospital staff nurses is a concern worldwide. Current research shows that continuing education among nurses can positively affect patient outcomes (O'Brien, T., Freemantle, N., Oxman, A, et al., 2002. Interactive continuing education workshops or conferences can improve professional practice and patient outcomes. Journal of Evidence Based Nursing. 26 (5)). Seeing a need for improved patient outcomes among hospitals in Ecuador, we conducted a teaching the teacher program to assist nurse managers to carry-out continuing education in their hospital system. This teaching the teacher program was established through the collaboration between one College of Nursing in Utah, USA and a large healthcare system in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The collaboration has been ongoing for five years, 2003 to present. Initial projects included classes for the nursing staff including technical skills, life-saving techniques, and nursing process and assessment. Collaborators from the US and Ecuador believed that in order to maximize the improvement of nursing care in the hospital system it was necessary to turn attention on the nurse managers and not just the staff nurses. This would allow for meaningful ongoing learning beyond the one-time classroom setting. Continuing education is not common in Ecuadorian hospitals as it is in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to describe the project and provide initial evaluative data on the response to the curriculum; including evidence of managers using the teaching principles they were taught. The underlying aim of the project was to achieve a sustainable impact by teaching the leaders of each unit how to be more effective teachers. In May 2007, a two-day "teaching the teacher" workshop was developed with the needs of the managers in mind. The participants in the course included the chief nursing officer and leaders of various units of the hospital. In May 2008 a follow-up class was taught, along with an evaluation by a verbal and written survey with open ended questions and an observation of an actual class being taught by the participants.