For many of you who may not know who I am, my name is Katrina and I am a Canadian nurse who moved down to Haiti 3.5 months ago to work with RHFH as their Director of Health Education and Pharmacy Coordinator. Taking on the role of building up the educational program here has been overwhelming at times as their are so many areas which one has the opportunity to expand into and quite honestly, the list will always be endless. But I have been absolutely loving the task of developing and presenting education to our patients in both one-on-one and large group settings, to our staff in specific learning sessions and then to our community, building up curriculums to be used in community classes.

Today, I want to explain the process in which I, along with our wonderful Haitian staff, develop education to be delivered in a group setting to our patients when they first arrive into clinic. Each month, staff members take turns teaching a particular topic to each group of patients as they come in throughout the day. We switch topics each month so that our patients who have monthly appointments with us can receive new education each time that they come. Some topics include community hygiene, feeding appropriate foods to children at each age, skin infections, and child development.

To prepare for the following month’s topic, I meet with the staff every Friday afternoon. The first Friday of the month, we brainstorm ideas and come up with what types of subcategories within the bigger topic is most important to talk about with the patients. The second week, I come with different curriculum and materials and we read them over and decide what we want to keep or what is not important or pertinent to our outcome which we want to achieve. The third Friday of the month, we come up with activities or visuals to use to capture the attention of our patients and help them remember what was talked about. Finally, on the last Friday, the staff practice presenting the lesson and we do any fine-tuning that is needed. Then we start this whole cycle again starting the next Friday!

It has been very encouraging to see the staff so passionate about presenting quality education to each patient that comes through our gate. We have had a lot of fun coming up with different songs or skits to include in the education. Empowering our patients by providing them with education is so crucial in building confidence in the community and we hope that it is helping improve the over all well-being of this area. Please pray that our patients, staff and community would have open hearts to receive all the education that is presented!