NUR 306 Module 5 Health Teaching Plan Example

Forty Minutes on the Wharf: A Health Teaching Plan on Life Jackets and Cold Water Survival for Lobster Crews

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 306: Nursing in the Community

Module Five Health Teaching Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Forty Minutes on the Wharf: A Health Teaching Plan on Life Jackets and Cold Water Survival for Lobster Crews

Knowing that life jackets save lives is not the same as wearing one on a wet deck at five in the morning. Among 204 U.S. commercial fishermen who died after falling overboard between 2000 and 2016, none was wearing a personal flotation device (Case et al., 2018). This teaching plan is designed for a spring meeting of the harbor association in Pell Harbor, a composite lobstering town in Maine. Its premise is that the crews already know the danger in general terms, so the session must address the specific reasons they do not wear flotation and must give them a chance to try modern designs before leaving the room.

Learner Assessment

About 35 captains and sternmen usually attend the association's spring meeting, which is held in the cooperative's gear shed before the season begins. Ages range from late teens to seventies, and most attendees have fished for many years. Reading levels vary, and several older members prefer spoken instruction to handouts. In informal conversations before the meeting, crew members gave four reasons for not wearing flotation: older jackets are bulky and hot, straps and buckles can catch on trap lines, falls overboard happen to offshore fleets rather than inshore lobster boats, and a man who wears one may be teased. Several also believed that a person who falls into cold water has time to swim back to the boat.

These beliefs map onto the Health Belief Model, which explains health behavior through perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits and perceived barriers, along with cues to action (Janz & Becker, 1984). For this group, severity is well understood, but susceptibility is low, barriers are high and the belief about swimming back reduces the perceived benefit of flotation.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the session, participants will be able to: (1) state that none of the fishermen who died after falling overboard in the national data was wearing flotation, and name lobster as one of the fisheries where those deaths clustered; (2) describe the cold shock response and explain why it makes swimming back to the boat unlikely; (3) compare at least two modern flotation designs for comfort and snag risk after trying them on; and (4) state an intention, on a show-of-hands card, to wear flotation on deck during the coming season. Objectives 1 and 2 are cognitive, objective 3 is psychomotor and objective 4 is affective.

Content and Methods

Table 1 outlines the session. Each segment is short, and the methods favor talk, demonstration and hands-on practice over slides, which suits the setting and the learners' preferences.

Table 1

Session Outline for the Life Jacket and Cold Water Teaching Plan

Note. The captain's story and the equipment loan are arranged in advance with the association. Designs shown are examples; no brand is promoted.

Addressing the Specific Beliefs

The belief that falls happen to other fleets is addressed with the national data by fishery, in which East Coast lobster ranks second only to Gulf shrimp for fatal falls, and with the fact that nearly half of the people who died were working alone at the time (Case et al., 2018). The belief about swimming back is addressed with the cold shock response. Tipton et al. (2017) describe how sudden immersion in cold water triggers an involuntary gasp and rapid breathing in the first minutes, which can cause drowning long before hypothermia becomes the danger. The ice water demonstration makes that response concrete without exaggeration.

The barriers of bulk and snagging are addressed by letting crews try designs made for work on deck. Teske et al. (2022) found that a social marketing campaign built around a fictional spokesman who looked, talked and acted like fishermen, and whose messages targeted common barriers and misconceptions, was well received and associated with reported changes in flotation use. The same principle guides this session: the most persuasive voice is a respected local captain, not the nurse, and the most persuasive argument is a jacket that does not get in the way.

Evaluation

Evaluation happens at two points. At the end of the session, the nurse will ask three spoken questions matched to objectives 1 and 2 and note the proportion of correct answers, observe whether each participant tries on at least two designs for objective 3, and count the intention cards for objective 4. Three months into the season, the association will run a brief dockside count on two mornings, noting how many crew members on deck are wearing flotation, and compare it with a count taken on two mornings in the week before the meeting. The observed change, not the intention card, is the outcome that matters, although the plan acknowledges that a short count on a few mornings cannot establish cause.

Resources and Cultural Fit

The association will borrow sample jackets from a regional marine safety program and host the session in its own shed, which avoids the feel of a clinic. The nurse will wear work clothes, keep printed material to one large-print sheet with a picture of each design and the harbor master's contact for loaner jackets, and avoid any language that implies that crews are careless. Humor about the teasing problem will come from the captain, not the nurse, since an outsider's jokes about local culture tend to land badly.

Conclusion

This teaching plan treats a well-known safety message as a behavior problem with specific barriers. It uses the crews' own beliefs to set objectives, chooses methods that fit a gear shed rather than a classroom, lets a local captain carry the message and measures what crews actually wear on deck. If it works, the evaluation will show it on the wharf in July.

References

Case, S. L., Lincoln, J. M., & Lucas, D. L. (2018). Fatal falls overboard in commercial fishing: United States, 2000-2016. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 67(16), 465-469. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6716a2

Janz, N. K., & Becker, M. H. (1984). The health belief model: A decade later. Health Education Quarterly, 11(1), 1-47. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019818401100101

Teske, T. D., Case, S. L., Lucas, D. L., Forrester, C. L., & Lincoln, J. M. (2022). Have you met Angus? Development and evaluation of a social marketing intervention to improve personal flotation device use in commercial fishing. Journal of Safety Research, 83, 260-268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2022.08.022

Tipton, M. J., Collier, N., Massey, H., Corbett, J., & Harper, M. (2017). Cold water immersion: Kill or cure? Experimental Physiology, 102(11), 1335-1355. https://doi.org/10.1113/EP086283