Continuing Education on Teaching Skills for Health Professionals: Evaluation of Training the Trainers

Effective Patient Teaching (EPT), a health professions continuing education course, improves educators' teaching skills when presented by its developers. This study aimed to determine whether others could teach EPT with similar effectiveness. Four nurse mnagers who provide stafftraining and supervision for multiple hospital diabetes care units presented EPT to health care professionals at seven such sites; another seven served as controls. The evaluation included observations of trainers conducting EPT programs in thefiel4 teaching shills ratings of health professionals in both groups, and bowledge tests administered to patients. Six months ter training, teaching skills scores of health professional EPT participants were better (p < .05) than controls. The EPT program improves participants' teaching skills and maintains these effects infield settings, when presented byfaculty not involved in its development.