Boston University Medical Campus
Nuclear Accident Preparedness Program

Chapter 1

Designing Courses for Health Professionals

Part I

Guidebook
CONTENTS

Chapter
1. Defining Competency Based Goals
2. Developing Learning Objectives
3. Linking Evaluation with Objectives
4. Using Evaluation to Design Instructional Activities
5. Planning Sessions

CHAPTER I

DEFINING COMPETENCY BASED GOALS

A. Describe the Instructional Situation
B. Write a Job Description
C. Verify Your Job Description
D. Revise the Job Description

Chapter Purpose

This chapter provides guidelines for defining the goals of your course…

1. To describe in general terms the purpose and nature of your course,
2. To lessen the time the course designer must spend on “getting started,” and
3. To increase the usefulness of your course.

Start with what is known. As you begin you probably know such things as the characteristics of students who will study, the number of “class” hours, facilities and resources available, etc. To focus on some of these ongoing considerations and to communicate what your course is about, describe the instructional situation in which you will be training emergency medical personnel in nuclear preparedness.

A. Define the Instructional Situation
GUIDELINES:

In completing your INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION and other steps in the design of your course, you may find the examples useful as a guide.

Define an Instructional Situation

1. Following the introduction of each step you will find a brief example of a portion of a possible course in nuclear preparedness. The same example is used throughout all steps. See page 9, which presents the INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION for the course in nuclear preparedness.

2. Review the example, then complete your INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION:

At the end of this handbook, you will find a set of forms which may be used or reproduced to complete various stages of the course.

Form 1: Instructional Situation

 

Course Title:
Course Purpose:
Expected Students: Number of Students Educational Background
Setting:
Constraints: Such as… No time to prepare Large number of students
Resources: Such as… Funds Personnel Laboratory facilities etc.

 

 

Example

 

Form 1: Instructional Situation

Course Title:	NUCLEAR PREPAREDNESS FOR EMERGENCY MEDICAL PERSONNEL
Course Purpose	To increase the capability of emergency medical personnel to respond effectively to a radiation accident.
Expected Students: Number of Students Educational Background	Participation will be limited to physicians, nurses and physician assistants who have successfully completed a ten day course in basic emergency care offered at a Regional Training Center. They will therefore be expected to have acquired essential competencies in general emergency care such as stabilization for transport, mass casualty incident management and hazardous materials management. This course will build on the general competencies in emergency care. It will focus on their adaptation in responding effectively to a radiation accident. Enrollment will be limited to 20 students.
Setting:	The course will be offered two to three times a year at a regional EMS training center. It will address both pre-hospital and hospital based emergency care for radiation related conditions as well as public health aspects of a radiation accident. It is anticipated that the course will last five days.
Constraints: Such as… No time to prepare Large number of students	It is anticipated that problems of infrastructure such as space, lighting and electricity will have been resolved by the time the course is ready to start. This, however, may not be the case. Appropriate teaching staff may not be available. It may, therefore, be necessary to compromise in terms of the qualifications for specific components of the course. Initial efforts may present “start up” problems. These, however, are likely to decrease with successive offerings of the course.
Resources: Such as… Funds Personnel Laboratory facilities etc.	Access to existing educational resources at the Regional Training Centers is assured. In addition, radiation survey instruments, personal dosimeters, moulage materials, and radioactive sources (Coleman lanterns, mantels, alpha/beta/gamma) will be purchased. The slide presentation “Disaster Management” and selected ORISE videos may be available. Teachers for the course will be drawn, in part, from existing Regional EMS Training Centers. They will be assisted, as necessary, by colleagues with backgrounds in appropriate radiation related fields.

 

B. Write a Job Description
INTRODUCTION

Write a Job Description

Assume the general purpose of the course or program is to prepare trainees or students to perform certain tasks or skills that relate to nuclear preparedness. This section will assist in determining the nature of that job, and the specific job-related tasks which should be taught in the course.

The assumption is: the course you design will be of greater value when you have accurate and complete information of what trainees must do on the job upon completion of training.

What you already know about nuclear accident preparedness helps you specify responsibilities trainees will have when they complete your course. Specifying responsibilities is the first step in producing a job description. Later you will become more precise by verifying the accuracy and completeness of the JOB DESCRIPTION.

GUIDELINES
1. Using Form 2 (see page 11), list the job(s) related to your course for which you will prepare your students. Then for each job…

2. Think about what people do on the job. List or describe the tasks they perform. (See the definition below.)

a. If there are people now doing this job, list the tasks they do when the job is done well. Describe good or desired performance, regardless of how well the job is done now.

b. If no one now does the job (i.e., if you are preparing students for a job that does not exist), describe the tasks you think they should be doing.

Definition: Task
What a person does on the job when carrying out his/her responsibilities. Demonstration of specific behaviors including but not limited to:

• makes judgments/decisions
• interacts with others
• provides services
• produces a product
• evaluates (people, products, programs, events)
• makes judgments plans (activities, programs, etc.)
• implements (activities, programs, etc.)

Tasks are expressed through action words; they describe action that is occurring. State your tasks with words such as: designs, develops, conducts, writes, examines.

3. At this point you may feel your course is getting too large, that is, that you will have more tasks than you can handle, given the course constraints and resources. If this is the case, refer to your INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION and decide…

a. If you need to consider changing any of the “constraints” or “resources”(such as the number of class hours, number of students, available facilities, etc.). Indicate such changes in column two of your INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION, and/or

b. If you need to remove certain tasks from the scope of the course. Are some tasks clearly less important than others? (If so, perhaps they should not be addressed in this course.) Might certain tasks be better learned in other courses or on the job?

Form 2, below is an example of how a JOB DESCRIPTION can be verified.
Because your course design will build upon the tasks as described in the JOB DESCRIPTION, it is essential that this description be thorough, accurate and complete. That is, the tasks you specify do represent the work activities.

Form 2: Job Description

Job Title:
Tasks:
	Field Study (Verify Job Description)
Procedure
Findings

 

Example:

 

Form 2: Job Description

Job Title:	First Medical Responder in a Radiation Accident
Tasks:	Prior to a radiation accident: 1. Participate in contingency planning for pre-hospital and hospital-based emergency response as well as population protection in the event of a radiation accident. 2. Maintain nuclear preparedness through drill in implementing contingency plans for pre-hospital and hospital care of radiation casualties. Following a radiation accident 3. Protect emergency personnel against exposure to radiation. 4. Detect, measure and assess the potential consequences of acute exposure to high levels of ionizing radiation. 5. Broaden diagnostic procedures to incorporate detection of contamination and injury due to radiation. 6. Modify capabilities for emergency care to include radiological isolation, decontamination and other methods of limiting the spread of radioactive contamination. 7. Implement treatment for both medical and radiological emergencies. 8. Supplement medical records by radiological documentation. 9. Communicate with victims of a radiation accident, professional associates and the general public.
	Field Study (Verify Job Description)
Procedure:	1. Consultation: Experts in the field of emergency medical personnel will be asked to critique the job description. As well, emergency staff and administrators from local hospitals will be queried. 2. Survey: An informal survey will be conducted among emergency medical personnel within the catchment area of the course. 3. Literature Review: A literature review will be conducted on experience acquired during earlier radiation accidents and patterns of emergency care in effect elsewhere.

GUIDELINES: Verify Your Job Description
l. Once you have written your job description, the next step is to verify it for accurateness and completeness.
For example:
a. Does it contain all the major tasks now carried out by workers on the job?
b. Does it contain all tasks workers should be completing on the job but are not now doing?
2. In addition, the field study should answer a number of questions which might have an impact on training:
For example:
a. What is the nature of the health delivery system in the area?
b. What are the major problems in nuclear accident preparedness?
c. What are the habits and beliefs of people relating to radiation exposure?
d. Are motorable roads, telephone service available?
e. What is the educational level of people who are available as trainees? What ways of learning are they used to?
f.What are the constraints and resources in relation to nuclear preparedness? For example, how far apart are health facilities? What equipment, supplies and medicines available?

3. Now study the methods for Job Analysis and Verification on pages 51 – 57 and select or construct a method for verifying the tasks in your JOB DESCRIPTION. You may find it helpful to examine the example (see Form 2 below).

4. After selecting one or more approaches to completing the verification of your JOB DESCRIPTION construct a list:

a. Of individuals or agencies you wish to review your JOB DESCRIPTION.
b. Indicating the questions you will ask, such as:

• Does your project have the approval of policy makers in your agency?
• Are financial and other resources available?
• Will the training program be used?

D. Revise the Job Description

Review and Self-Check
1. Based on the verification analysis, revise your JOB DESCRIPTION as follows:

a. KEEP those tasks that are important that should be performed and/or are now performed on the job.

b. ELIMINATE tasks that are unimportant as well as those tasks not performed on the job.

c. ADD important tasks you overlooked that can be taught in the course.

d. REVISE those tasks that are important but should be stated differently.

e. KEEP in mind the information you obtained on educational level of students, on teaching methods used, on resources and constraints as you develop instructional activities for your course.

The JOB DESCRIPTION will serve as the basis for your course design. Keep it along with your INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION where you can refer to it as it is needed.

Review and Self-Check

Look at your INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION and JOB DESCRIPTION. Before moving on, check () to be certain you have done each of the following:
Regarding the INSTRUCTIONAL SITUATION: (See your completed Form 1)

( ) 1. Noted all known or fixed information about the course.
( ) 2. Indicated certain items you might want to change, especially with regard to resources and constraints.

Regarding the JOB DESCRIPTION: (See your completed Form 2)

( ) 3. Identified the job(s) for which you hope to prepare students,
( ) 4. Listed tasks for each job which you will teach in the course.
( ) 5. Checked out and verified the JOB DESCRIPTION.
( ) 6. Revised the JOB DESCRIPTION based on the verifications of your JOB DESCRIPTION.