An interventional study to compare the effect of teaching on lecture method and the use of educational package on the knowledge and performance of health care providers

Background: Health care providers are considered as a group of primary health service workers increasing their scientific and practical ability. Providing an effective and desirable teaching is one of the main ways to improve the quality of services; however, this will be possible by selecting an appropriate training method. Therefore, the goal of this study was to determine the effect of teaching the principles of caring for pregnant mothers on knowledge and health care providers' performance with on-site and non-attendance methods. Methods: This study was conducted as an interventional and semi-experimental study in 2017-2018. Sixty four health care providers were enrolled in Mashhad's health center. They were randomly divided into two groups of 32. For the non-attendance group, the educational package contents were prepared in the form of PowerPoint slides consisting texts and images. For the on-site teaching group, the participants were taught in lecture for six hours. The amount of knowledge of health care providers was assessed before and after training by using a written test questionnaire and their performance at work was controlled by a checklist Results: By comparing the scores before and after the educational intervention, the difference in mean scores in the on-site group was 4.50 ± 0.334 and in the non-attending group was 3.77 ± 0.332. This difference in the values in each group was significant. The difference between the mean post-test scores in the two groups was 0.70 ± 0. 463. The difference in the mean of functional scores with two types of training was determined 17.1 ± 0.246, and no significant difference was found for the groups (p = 0.496). Conclusion: In this study, the increase in the level of health care information was acceptable. Both methods had the same effect in the cognitive and functional domain. Therefore, the method of using the educational package can be a good alternative to the lecture method.