Where There Is No Doctor - Boekje Pienter

TEACHING AND LEARNING TOGETHER—THE HEALTH WORKER AS AN EDUCATORAs you come to realize how many things affect health, you may think the healthworker has an impossibly large job. And true, you will never get much done if you tryto deliver health care by yourself.Only when the people themselves become actively responsible for their ownand 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 beshared.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 tohelp others grow, and to grow with them. A good teacher is not someone whoputs ideas into other people’s heads; he or she is someone who helps othersbuild 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 healthworker 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, andto help your people think and work together.On the next few pages are some ideas that may help you do this. They are onlysuggestions. You will have many other ideas yourself.TWO APPROACHES TO HEALTH CAREw21