Increasing the effectiveness of your teaching program for the elderly: assessing the client's readiness to learn

The education of the elderly person is a critical component of nursing interventions for health maintenance and illness prevention in the elderly. Teaching and learning transactions require great skill under the best of circumstances, but they take on new demands and require different skills when the client is ill and feels vulnerable. To maximize an educational opportunity, the nurse must be able to understand the factors that may inhibit successful learning and be very astute in assessing and re-evaluating the client's readiness and capacity to learn at a specific time. It is imperative that nurses realize that taking the time to assess a client's readiness to learn and utilizing the information that is gathered to develop a teaching plan that best meets the clients needs increase the likelihood of a successful teaching/learning event for both the nurse and the client. The information should assist the health care worker's ability to give older persons the tools and information that they require to assist them to maintain optimum independence and a better quality of life. Hopefully, the end result will be a win-win encounter for all involved in the learning experience.