Community Teaching Plan for Hypertension and the Teaching Experience

Community Teaching Plan: Teaching Experience Paper
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Introduction
Hypertension is among the primary cause of cardiovascular diseases in the U.S. According to the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), about half of American adults have hypertension which is defined as a systolic blood pressure ≥ 130 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure ≥ 80 mm Hg. Hypertension is highly prevalent among minority groups, especially African Americans, where one in every four adult African Americans is reportedly taking hypertension medication. Hypertension is often easy to ignore because it has no specific symptoms other than systolic and diastolic numbers recorded by the blood pressure cuff. As such, it remains the number one silent killer in the US, where over 50,000 succumb to hypertension-related complications annually. The American Heart Association reports that high blood pressure is a dangerous disease because it puts an individual at an increased risk of stroke, heart failure, heart disease, among other complications. Nurses involved in the response and recovery efforts of patients need information on how to help patients and themselves navigate through risk factors of hypertension. While obesity, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, high intake of salt, aging, and chronic kidney disease cause pressure, stress remain one of the most ignored cause especially in the nursing sector. Caring for medically fragile children is not only a stressor to the nurse but also to the family. In the paper, a teaching program designed for a group of home health nurses is discussed and described. Hypertension, as will be discussed, can be prevented and managed in many ways. The paper is broken down into a summary of the teaching plan, epidemiological rationale, evaluation of teaching experiences, the response of community members, and detailed assessment of areas of strength and improvement.
Summary of Teaching Plan
The teaching plan is designed for home health nurses caring for fragile children and their families. The goal of the teaching plan is to help them understand how overarching issues such as belief patterns, existing health perceptions, nutrition and diet, activity and exercising, sleep, relationships, among others, contribute towards hypertension. More so, the teaching plan seeks to help home health nurses identify everyday stressors, evidence-based diagnosis, coping strategies, and appropriate nursing care (Carey, Muntner, Bosworth, & Whelton, 2018). Ideally, innovative technologies such as Powerpoint presentations aided in disseminating information, primarily through both pictures and written texts. The training was built mainly on real-life stories, statistical evidence, and questions regarding hypertension (Pinto & Martins, 2017). The overall emphasis of the presentation was to fully explore high blood pressure, its health-related risks, causes, and stressors, especially in the non-clinical setting.
More so, the overall significance of the training was to help home health nurses understand the role of stress in hypertension and how to help patients live healthy lives. Accordingly, many day-to-day events, including caring for sic...