Community Teaching Plan Sample Paper

With nearly two years since the COVID19 epidemic began, there has been a tremendous impact on numerous sectors such as health, education, leisure and hospitality, professional business services among others.  The pandemic prompted the World Health Organization to impose rigorous measures such as movement restrictions, the use of personal protective equipment, hand hygiene, and, later, COVID19 vaccine. These interventions have resulted in a decrease in COVID19 morbidity and mortality. In terms of population health, COVID19 has raised psychological stress due to job loss over the era, in addition to physical debilitation (Rajkumar, 2020). This has exacerbated or created new mental health issues in the population, most notably depression. In the Virginia community, the most pressing health concern is depression, which demands actions to address it. In this paper, a teaching plan is developed to educate community members on depression during the COVID19 era, how to handle and mitigate its effects, and how to prevent it.

Summary of the Community Teaching Plan

Lesson Description

  1. The purpose of this session is to provide professional education to community members about depression during the COVID19 era and how the pandemic has exacerbated mental health concerns.
  2. This lecture is divided into ten 30-minute sessions and includes in-depth information regarding depression during the COVID19 period. The lesson also provides community members with crucial understanding and needs of depressed individuals, care for early detection of them, and the necessary skills to provide high-quality care to those in need.
  3. The lesson also includes teaching the community on strategies to prevent the occurrences of depression and mitigate the repercussions once they occur, as well as an advancement of linking affected individuals to the right community services that support individuals with depression.

Lesson Goals

  1. To create awareness about the mental health problems during the COVID19 pandemic while focusing on depression as a diagnostic entity.
  2. To encourage community members to be keen in identifying the symptoms and coach them on how to provide the appropriate care for affected individuals to improve their health conditions and maintain their healthy habitus.

Lesson Objectives

  1. Understand the symptoms of depression and be able to recognize depressed individuals (Teach DSM-5 Criteria for Diagnosis)
  2. Determine the risk factors for depression in community members during the pandemic.
  3. Recognize the unique methods for preventing the emergence of depression in high-risk individuals.
  4. Develop basic nursing care for affected individuals in order to avoid negative repercussions.
  5. Provide community members with resources such as contacts, websites, and organizations that they can contact if they come across an affected individual.

Lesson Materials

  1. PowerPoint Presentations
  2. Video Clips
  3. Texts (useful internet resources): websites

Lesson Outline

1.Introduction

  1. History of the various aspects of mental diseases such as depression and anxiety occurring during pandemic times.
  2. The reasons for recognizing seriousness of mental health conditions during pandemics
  3. Definition of Depression based on DSM-5
  4. Epidemiology

2.Recognition

  1. DSM-5 Diagnostic criteria (A to E)
  2. Associated features supporting diagnosis

3.Risks and Prognostic Factors

  1. Environmental
  2. Genetics and physiological
  3. Temperamental
  4. Course Modifiers
  5. Culture related factors

4.Functional Consequences of Depressive Disorders during the COVID19 era

5.Treatment and nursing support for the affected individuals

Epidemiological Rationale for Topic: Depression in the era of COVID19

During a poll conducted in the Virginia community, the majority of health professionals said that mental health disorders, particularly depression, are the most concerning. Depression in the COVID19 era has been investigated by a number of scientists, and the available statistics on its occurrence are the result of several epidemiological observations. Listed below are a few of the most current research on the prevalence of depression in the COVID19 era.

Huang and Zhao (2021) conducted a cross-sectional web-based survey of 7236 members of the general public in China and discovered that 20.1% of the population suffered from depression symptoms. In the study, persons with depressive symptoms were identified using the Center for Epidemiology Scale for Depression (CES-D). Wang et al. (2020) conducted an online survey among 1210 respondents in 194 Chinese cities in a different cross-sectional study, and the results show that 53.8% of them had some level of stress, and 16.5% had moderate to severe depressive symptoms. In their cross-sectional online survey study of 2766 Italian participants, Mazza et al. (2020) discovered that the prevalence of severe and moderate depression is 15% and 17%, respectively. The study also discovered that 11.5% and 7.2% of study participants suffered from severe and moderate anxiety, respectively.

Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al. (2020) conducted a cross-sectional survey among 976 adult participants in Spain, and the results are as follows: In males, the prevalence of mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe depression was 8.7%, 4%, and 2.9%, respectively, while females had the following prevalence: In mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe depression, the rates were 8.6%, 7.1%, 2.3%, and 3%, respectively. In a different nation, Iran, Moghanibashi-Mansourieh (2020) performs a cross-sectional online survey on anxiety among 10754 people, and the results show that anxiety levels are higher in women than in men. The bottom line is that rates of mental health conditions have risen dramatically during the COVID19 era, which has been attributed to stressful prevailing life conditions such as job loss, death of loved ones, infection, fatigue and loneliness, and separation from family due to measures such as restricted movement in various countries. Depression was chosen because it is the most serious health concern in the Virginia community during the COVID19, and it has been linked to the majority of individuals losing their jobs during that time period, necessitating an intervention to treat it.

Evaluation of Teaching Experiences and Insight into Self-Appraisal

Self-reflection is a technique for regularly reviewing the teaching plan. Critical questions such as “How did the lesson go?” are asked at the end of the lesson. How did the community members participate, and did they appear to learn? Continuous self-evaluation enables beneficial changes in subsequent sessions (Yang et al., 2017). Another method for evaluating the teaching strategy is to solicit feedback from the community. To establish whether or not learning is taking place, it is helpful to solicit input from community members at various points throughout the educational process. For example, if the members meet twice a week for 30-minute sessions, the presenter may want to seek feedback from the members at the end of the week’s session on the week’s teachings. This can be accomplished through the use of an audience response system, in which any individual can volunteer at the end of the session to make random comments about the week’s session over a public address system, or through the use of one-minute papers, in which members write down what they have learned from that session (Yang et al., 2017). Another approach of gathering feedback from members is to employ a traffic light feedback system, in which the instructor uses red, yellow, or green sticky notes to assess learning and comprehension. For example, which teaching approaches do members wish to reduce (red), continue (yellow), or see more of? (green).

Feedback from a colleague is also important in evaluating my teaching strategy. Colleagues who accompany me during community teaching can provide comments on the instruction, identify specific problems, and suggest methods to improve the next time. A colleague can provide an honest evaluation about the teaching plan and may be a good source for my improved performance in a future similar assignment.

Finally, course evaluation questionnaires can be employed to assess the teaching plan. One can engage the level of learning that has occurred by distributing evaluation questionnaires (Yang et al., 2017). The educator prioritizes the information he/she wants to collect from the learners while creating the questionnaires, and if possible, involves them in the design of the questions. In order to get a quick answer, assessment questionnaires are designed with single questions, few questions, and questions that are brief and unambiguous.

Community Response to Teaching

            The reaction to community teaching can be immediate or delayed. The instant reaction to the teaching was positive, as evidenced by positive responses from community members, confirming that learning had happened. When asked questions at the end of the event, the majority of the community members replied correctly. The majority could understand how depression manifests, identify risk and prognosis indicators, offer the most basic nursing care to whoever is affected, and connect the many affected individuals to relevant community services. The number of community members who become aware and wary about depression, the number of individuals linked to various community resources that support afflicted individuals, and the reduction in the occurrence rate of depression during the COVID19 period will be used to measure delayed response. During the teaching sessions, the members were eager to learn, attentive, and passionate about getting to know more outside of the confines of the lesson plan. This is a good indicator that the community’s reaction to the depression education was positive.

Strengths and Weaknesses

            The fact that an issue of greatest interest to the community was picked is a significant achievement to be proud of. Following the huge psychological impact of the epidemic, the frequency was inflated during COVID19. The teaching plan was designed in the most basic way possible so that community members could readily understand it. Every component of the application was written in easy language and in English because the bulk of the inhabitants spoke English fluently. As a result, there was no language barrier during the presentation, as even the elderly appeared to have an easy time interpreting the information.

Audiovisuals were utilized, and simulations were constructed where practical, to help participants internalize the topics. To optimize patient learning, modern learning approaches go beyond didactic lectures and include the presentation of information through audiovisuals and simulation (Johnston et al., 2017). Furthermore, the fact that the program was brought to the community in close proximity to the residents is a significant step forward. Weaknesses included the amount of time required to arrange the sessions, the number of weeks required to finish the training, and the inflexibility of the teaching plan—it was supposed to happen twice a week for 5 weeks without any lesson being postponed. Such areas of weakness will be investigated and rectified should there be a need to create a future teaching plan.

Conclusion

            The unprecedented COVID19 brought with it a slew of physical, emotional, social, and psychological issues. As seen in the Virginia community, among the social issues were job loss and financial constraints. As a result of being anxious and unable to provide for their families, people developed mental health problems, particularly depression. The teaching plan therefore concentrated on depression. It took 10 sessions of 30 minutes each over the course of 5 weeks. Despite the positive response from the community, a future program must be adaptable in order to meet the needs and preferences of the community members. Among the goals of the teaching plan were the ability to recognize depressive signs, identify patients at risk, and create basic nursing care for patients in need.

References

  • Huang, Y., & Zhao, N. (2021). Corrigendum to Generalized anxiety disorder, depressive symptoms and sleep quality during COVID-19 outbreak in China: a web-based cross-sectional survey [Psychiatry Research, 288 (2020) 112954]. Psychiatry Research, 299(113803), 113803. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2021.113803
  • Johnston, S., Parker, C. N., & Fox, A. (2017). Impact of audio-visual storytelling in simulation learning experiences of undergraduate nursing students. Nurse Education Today, 56, 52–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.06.011
  • Mazza, C., Ricci, E., Biondi, S., Colasanti, M., Ferracuti, S., Napoli, C., & Roma, P. (2020). A nationwide survey of psychological distress among Italian people during the COVID-19 pandemic: Immediate psychological responses and associated factors. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(9), 3165. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093165
  • Rajkumar, R. P. (2020). COVID-19 and mental health: A review of the existing literature. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 52(102066), 102066. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102066
  • Wang, C., Pan, R., Wan, X., Tan, Y., Xu, L., Ho, C. S., & Ho, R. C. (2020). Immediate psychological responses and associated factors during the initial stage of the 2019 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic among the general population in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(5), 1729. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051729
  • Yang, X.-F., Talmy, T., Zhu, C.-H., Li, P.-F., Wang, W., Zhang, P., Zhang, H.-W., Bulis, S., Wang, K.-X., Chen, X., Wang, Y.-L., Jiang, D.-P., Zong, Z.-W., & Zhou, J. (2017). Evaluation of teaching and learning: A basis for improvement in medical education: A basis for improvement in medical education. Chinese Medical Journal, 130(10), 1259–1260. https://doi.org/10.4103/0366-6999.205851