The Ability of Healthcare Workers to Provide Patient Education: A Qualitative Study

The success of training programs in health-treatment systems belongs to competent staff in the field of education. The aim of this study was to identify the experiences of staff employed in health centers in Khamir City, Hormozgan Province, Iran, to determine the skills needed to become a health educator from their viewpoints.
This qualitative study was conducted in 2015 in Khamir City. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 15 employees working in health centers with at least 3 years of experience chosen via purposive sampling method. Content analysis approach was used to analyze the data.
Two main themes were extracted, “individual’s experience-based capability” and “learning-based capability”. The “use of communication skills and personal characteristics by health care staff”, “experience-based learning”, and “scientific-based learning” were the extracted subthemes.
In training health personnel, health system managers and trainers should pay attention to the willingness and ability of healthcare workers in implementing health education, and also to update workers’ knowledge of health.