IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v18y2021i9p4990-d550425.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Developing and Evaluating a Continuous Education Program for Healthcare Assistants in Macao: A Cluster-Randomized Trial

Author

Listed:
  • Pak-Leng Cheong

    (Education Department, Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau, Macau 999078, China)

  • Nanly Hsu

    (Faculty of Medicine, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China)

Abstract

The shortage of healthcare human resources is an important challenge for coping with the aging society in Macao. Since little attention has been paid to continuous education of healthcare assistants, this study aims to develop and evaluate a continuous education program, supporting the expansion and optimization of the competence of healthcare assistants. It is a cluster-randomized trial study. All healthcare assistants who were employed in nursing homes in Macao were eligible for this study. Six nursing homes were recruited and randomly assigned either an experimental group (3 nursing homes; 45 healthcare assistants) or a control group (3 nursing homes; 40 healthcare assistants). Healthcare assistants were assessed at baseline and after intervention with the Healthcare Assistants Care Knowledge Test and the Healthcare Assistants Care Competence Self-Assessment. The experimental group received a continuous education program with 10 themes during 2017–2018 while the control groups did not. The results of the generalized estimating equation showed that care knowledge in the experimental group was significantly different from that of the control group (Wald Chi Square = 3.848, p < 0.05) as well as care competence (Wald Chi Square = 13.361, p < 0.001). This study developed a continuous program for health assistants and provided evidence that continuous education programs improve and maintain the level of care knowledge and care competency of healthcare assistants.

Suggested Citation

  • Pak-Leng Cheong & Nanly Hsu, 2021. "Developing and Evaluating a Continuous Education Program for Healthcare Assistants in Macao: A Cluster-Randomized Trial," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-11, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:9:p:4990-:d:550425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4990/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4990/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:9:p:4990-:d:550425. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.