Training Health Care Workers
The ultimate goal of a clinical mentoring program is to build the skills of local clinicians. Clinical mentors may provide one-on-one mentoring to a health care provider during a patient consultation, conduct stand-alone sessions for clinical staff on various clinical topics, lead case discussions highlighting the management of complex cases, and accompany staff on rounds. This section includes information on how to use case studies and clinical vignettes to guide the training of health care workers as well as documents on adult learning, clinical decision-making in resource limited settings, and an approach to training health care workers on a process for adherence counseling.
Case studies are a valuable way to teach clinical decision-making and critical thinking skills. This section includes instructions on how to write effective case studies and sample case studies for use when training health care workers.
Clinical vignettes are a special type of clinical teaching case used primarily to measure trainees’ knowledge and clinical reasoning. A vignette can be designed to measure knowledge about a specific diagnosis or clinical situation at the same time as it measures trainees’ skills in performing the tasks necessary to diagnose and care for the patient. This section includes a description of clinical vignettes as well as sample clinical vignettes tailored to physicians and nurses.
- Principles of Adult Learning
This tool explains the five principles of adult learning, how to address the needs and priorities of adult learners, and strategies for working with them successfully.
- Medical Uncertainty, Resource Limitations, and
Physician Decision Making
This document emphasizes ways to avoid errors in clinical reasoning and how to use simple evidence-based medicine concepts to ensure safer medical practices in resource-constrained settings.
- Process for Adherence Counseling
This outlines a process for conducting adherence counseling and assessing client adherence. The document can be used by mentors to teach health care workers a systematic process for delivering adherence counseling.