Introduction

Patient teaching encompasses the efforts of healthcare professionals to impart knowledge to the general public about their health status and needs. Thus, it is either a therapeutic process-aimed at enabling patients to change their health-related behaviors or preventative- people are urged to choose to lead healthy lifestyles (Gruman, Rovner, French, Jeffress, Sofaer, Shaller & Prager, 2010). Notably, patient teaching is an important venture in modern healthcare practice. This importance is attributable to the need to encourage self-management among chronically ill patients, as well as improve understanding and compliance to treatments through an increase in shared decision making (Gruman et al., 2010).  This paper seeks to present the plan for a holistic patient education project, whereby school children are taught to maintain hand hygiene. There is the elucidation of the target population’s learning needs, followed by a clear discussion on the plan of the project itself and the different mechanisms used to evaluate the plan.  

Assessment of the Learning Needs of the Selected Population

The success of any teaching venture is pinned on the capacity to identify the learner’s learning needs early enough. According to Hattie (2012), learning needs represent the aggregate of higher functional qualities, which contribute to the leaner’s capacity to comprehend and retain information. In the normal school setting, these features are easier to identify due to the parents’ reporting prior to registering their children in school. In other cases, the child’s needs are easily identified whenever there is an apparent inability to thrive within the standard teaching measures instituted within the particular school (William, 2011). As such, a school-oriented project requires the keen involvement of the teaching staff and school personnel, as their input is essential to help ease the process of assessing their students’ learning needs.