Where There Is No Doctor 2010

Where There Is No Doctor 2010
TEACHING AND LEARNING TOGETHER—
THE HEALTH WORKER AS AN EDUCATOR
As you come to realize how many things affect health, you may think the health
worker has an impossibly large job. And true, you will never get much done if you
try to deliver health care by yourself.
Only when the people themselves become actively responsible for their
own and their community’s health, can important changes take place.
Your community’s well-being depends on the involvement not of one person,
but of nearly everyone. For this to happen, responsibility and knowledge must
be shared.
This is why your first job as a health worker is to teach—to teach children,
parents, farmers, schoolteachers, other health workers—everyone you can.
The art of teaching is the most important skill a person can learn. To teach is to
help others grow, and to grow with them. A good teacher is not someone who
puts ideas into other people’s heads; he or she is someone who helps others
build on their own ideas, to make new discoveries for themselves.
Teaching and learning should not be limited to the schoolhouse or health post.
They should take place in the home and in the fields and on the road. As a health
worker one of your best chances to teach will probably be when you treat the sick.
But you should look for every opportunity to exchange ideas, to share, to show, and
to help your people think and work together.
On the next few pages are some ideas that may help you do this. They are only
suggestions. You will have many other ideas yourself.
Two Approaches to HEALTH Care
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