Impact Of Healthcare Education In Schools: A Study In UAE

Background of the study

Early Healthcare Education in school has some significance in the lifestyle of the students while contributing the overall cost reduction for health promotional purpose. This proposal has been developed to identify the significance of this topic. In this section the research background, the problem statement, research rationale will be discussed. Apart from that, the research aims and objectives as well as the research questions will be also identified respectively. The structure of this research and the potential thesis project

Healthcare education and healthcare related programs are very common in early stage of education in school across the world. Countries like United State, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, China and other focus on the early age healthcare education. At the early stage of evaluation of education system the healthcare education is considered as a part of biological science. However, at the beginning of the 21^th century the healthcare related education including hygiene, nutrition, lifestyle have been adopted as individual subject to teach in secondary schools in many countries (Sung and Lin 2013). Nowadays, some countries like Japan, United State, United Kingdom and other have already incorporated the hygiene related education in their primary even pre-primary education system. The purpose of this adaptation or changes is making the next generation aware of their health and safety measures from their very early age of development. According to Meeks, Heit and Page (2012), more than 65% of healthcare related education can be given to the students by school while the rest of 35% is totally dependent on the awareness of the individual’s families and socio-cultural environment. Therefore it is obvious that the intervention of health education in  school can have multiple impacts on the students perspective and behaviour.

The field of this study is the impact of health education on early education in school. Many studies have been done on this topic in form of research, report, published documents, promotional broadcast and others. Most of these paper focuses on the implementation process of emergency and health education in school level. However, there are very less amount of study that reflect the impact of health and emergency related education on the student’s life style and how it can be beneficial for medical cost reduction. The importance of this education system can be more highlighted only if the value of it can be analysed clearly.  

Implementation of healthcare related study in school level education system is not a entirely new incorporation in modern era. However, the appropriate analysis and examination on its impact on the students and the overall society will be beneficial for the education system of any country or community. In United Arab Emirates the majority of school level education system id divided into two separate locations namely Dubai and Abu Dhabi. To develop the education based economy and the quality of the education system with science and technology the UAE government allocated 21.2 % of its 2016 federal budget for the education sector (Hatherley-Greene 2012). The proper analysis of significance of health education in preparatory and secondary level along with its impact on the social and economic position of the nation, can highlight this issue while finding the proper solution to incorporate this in school level education with appropriate infrastructure. Enrolling healthcare education in school curriculum in the UAE and starting early health education on CPR and infection control will be helpful for future to decrease hospitalizations. It will also help the new generation to take care of themselves to decrease the diseases and infections can decrease.

Problem statement

The Primary aim of this research is to explore and examine the impact of health related education in school level on the quality of student’s life and economy. The secondary aim is to analyse how this educational implementation can be beneficial for reducing the medical cost. The focus of this research is healthcare study related to CPR or Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, which is an emergency healthcare support procedure.  The research will also focus on the enrollment of healthcare education in school curriculum in the UAE and early health education on CPR (first aid), which can help save lives and infection control.

In this section, the topic of the study will be broadly analysed with the help of various literature and secondary information from various online, offline source, research journals, articles, published reports, and UAE government broadcasts. The purpose of this literature review to focus on the existing health education in schools of UAE while analysing the impact of emergency health educations like CPR. The financial benefit of this incorporation will be also analysed in this literature review section.

CPR or Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation is an emergency procedure allows the operator to perform specific pressure on the patient’s body to restore the spontaneous blood circulation and breathing rhythm. It is often performed with artificial ventilation while keeping the brain function intact. Mostly, this procedure is followed in an emergency of sudden cardiac arrest abnormal breathing or agonal respiration. The CPR procedure involves the chest compression, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and use of mechanical ventilation (Böttiger et al. 2016). Though the CPR procedure is not enough to restart the heart, it can restore the partial flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and heart. In is one of the most effective emergency handling methods. In every emergency force such as fire-brigade, rescue team, paramedic and others, training of CPR with and without mechanical ventilation is the most essential part.

CPR training is one of the most essential training in the education of healthcare support activities worldwide. This procedure is not only beneficial for specific department of social service, training of CPR to common citizen is highly economically, socially beneficial as well. In many countries like US, Canada, UK, Australia and others, government and social service department perform volunteer training program for common people to teach them about various healthcare and emergency procedure like CPR, Heimlich Manoeuvre and others (Plant. and Taylor 2013). These process is helpful in many cases including in drowning treatment, berthing problems, cardiac or respiratory issues and others. The possibility of survival from cardiac arrest after applying CPR procedure without an delay is 62% worldwide. However, in case of breathing issues CPR has been proven as effective procedure with survival chance of 58%. In case of drowning the probability of survival after performing CPR is more than 82% (Lee et al. 2013). Moreover, CPR is one of the most effective First Aid procedure that can be performed manually by any person with appropriate training.

Research rationale

Health education is a group of studies that can help the students to understand the basic body function and to perform certain first aid procedure using specific techniques. Health education can be effective for physical, mental and emotional issues. In early stage of education in school the health education, allows the students to learn about the hygiene factors, healthy practices and the unhealthy regular practices as well (Meeks, Heit and Page 2012).  On the other hand, through the health education in school the students would be aware of the negative impact of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs on their lifestyle and society. Along with these factors, health education also allow the public services to promote the health, hygiene and nutrition factors though which the overall quality of the life o the society can be uplifted. Health education in school can be subdivided into many interrelated sections, such as:

• Teaching students with physical, medical, or cognitive disabilities;
• Teaching students of various cultural backgrounds
• Teaching students with limited English proficiency
• Assessing students’ performance in health education (Bhayani 2014)
• Medical updates on health information and health trends
• Involving parents, families, and others in healthcare learning
• Certification procedure after completing the healthcare training in school
• Review and update the healthcare related curriculum

Health education in school is mainly focuses on the preparatory and secondary level of education. In this age, learning the healthcare strategies and practice can be very viable. At the same time, the adaptation power of the student of these age is comparatively high (Tones, Robinson and Tilford 2013). Through this healthcare related education, they can learn about the nutrition, healthy physical activity, prevention of diseases, sudden injury and others. At the beginning of the 21^th century the healthcare related education including hygiene, nutrition, lifestyle have been adopted as individual subject to teach in secondary schools in many countries. Nowadays, some countries like Japan, United State, United Kingdom and other have already incorporated the hygiene related education in their primary even pre-primary education system (Cao, Chen and Wang 2014). In United Arab Emirates the majority of school level education system id divided into two separate locations namely Dubai and Abu Dhabi. To develop the education based economy and the quality of the education system with science and technology the UAE government allocated 21.2 % of its 2016 federal budget for the education sector.

In early childhood education and schools, infections and disease outbreaks are very common because of the environment where students are spending lots of time closely together. To limit the spread of infectious diseases the health studies and awareness on hygiene play an important role. Educating the students about the benefit of frequent hand washing, proper vaccination, and cleaning and disinfecting surfaces are important (). The Government of UAE always makes sure that in every school year larger group of young children become productive and healthy by following some key infection prevention tips. As per the government report, 40% of children of age 5-17 years have missed more than three school days in the past year due to infective diseases and illness (Demissie et al. 2013). Apart from that, overall 38 million school days are lost as a result of the viral fever and infectious flu. Appropriate guidelines and healthcare education can prevent unnecessary morbidity and mortality associated with viral and bacterial infection and resultant flues and other illness.

Aims and objectives

More than 38% of average household income of UAE is washed-out in the treatment of avoidable diseases and illness. It has a strong impact on the social and economic condition of the nation (Schwarzer 2014). Most of these diseases are sprayed due to lack of awareness and health education in common people. School education is an ideal platform where people of next generation can be educated through effective healthcare learning plan. Not only it can reduce the overall cost for the treatment of avoidable diseases, it can also secure the social environment through train the students about emergency healthcare procedures like CPR (D’Cruz and Aradhya 2013).  Empowering the students to improve their health as well as to handle emergency health issues like cardiac arrest, drowning, breathing troubles will enable the nation to increase the overall health condition while reducing the health related expense. Moreover, healthcare education in school level can be made at very little cost to the education system where it can reduce the overall health care costs significantly from personal to national level (Rosenthal et al. 2012).

CPR training is one of the most essential training in the education of healthcare support activities worldwide. This procedure is not only beneficial for specific department of social service, training of CPR to the students is highly economically, socially beneficial as well. Appropriate guidelines and healthcare education can prevent unnecessary morbidity and mortality associated with viral and bacterial infection and resultant flues and other illness. Moreover, healthcare education in school level can reduce the overall health care costs significantly.

The above literature review and discussion has been made considering various online and offline research articles, educational studies, government reports and others. However, this literature review has some serious limitations. The major limitation of this literature review is , the literature review is focused only on the healthcare and emergency related education instead of the overall healthcare study programs such as hygiene and neuration. On the other hand, The literature review lacks the secondary numerical or statistical data collected from survey report or other real time collection and analysis.

In this section, the execution procedure of this research will be discussed including the data collection, analysis and approach of the study. This methodology will allow the researchers to conduct the research under certain predetermined planning and confederation. Along with the research design, the research methodology also allow the research to abide by the legal and ethical compliance during the conduction of the strategic process through using various tools. The research timeline will be also presented along with the graphical representation through excel based grant chart.

Literature Review

The research outline refers the structure of the research including the research approach, research design and research philosophy. On these specific consideration the data collection and analysis procedure will be developed. Apart from the research outline also helps to identify the research tools and specific data collection strategies. The focus of this research is to explore the impact of the healthcare education on the school level education system. Therefore, in order to conduct these research both real time and secondary data will be taken under consideration. Among the three of the research philosophies namely Positivism, Interpretivism and Realism philosophy, the Realism philosophy has been taken for this research.

The research approach is another essential part of choosing the right path of conducting the research, which provides two optional choices namely Inductive and deductive research approach (Neuman 2013). This research does not have any pre determined assumption or hypothesis. Therefore to explore the field of the research, the inductive research approach has been considered for this research. For this same reason, among Exploratory, Explanatory and Descriptive research design the Exploratory research design has been chosen for this research. The exploratory research design will allow the research to explore the healthcare education and its impact on student’s life style and economic factor.

Data collection is one of the most essential part of any research that allows the researcher to collect both real time data and secondary data as well as either one of therm. For this research both primary and secondary data collection will be considered (Mackey and Gass 2015). For primary data collection the research will utilise the face to face semi structured interview with open ended questions to specific sample size. On the other hand, the secondary data including the statistical report, qualitative discussion will be collected from online and offline research paper, published government and non-government reports and other relevant resources. The secondary data will be presented in literature review section. For the interview session, 5 professional respondents will be considered from educational, social care and public service department of UAE. Therefore, for both primary and secondary data collection non probability sampling will be followed.

The collected data can be analysed with either qualitative or quantitative analysis or the research can follow the both data analysis method together. The qualitative analysis represents the non-numerical data analysis with cause and effect analysis, comparison, narrative or thematic description of secondary or primary data. On the other hand, the quantitative data analysis allows the researcher to analyse the numerical data with mathematical and statistical analysis. In this research, only qualitative analysis will be applied on the collected data from the secondary resources and interview based data resources. In order to analyse the collected data from semi structured face-to-face interviews, the narrative data analysis will be followed.

CPR or Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

The ethical confederation is chiefly essential for any research for ensuring the authenticity and the credibility of the study that allows to conduct the research under the rules and regulations while getting an approval from the ethical measure. The research has been conducted in a way that will not cause any personal and occupational harm to the respondents. The confidentiality of the collected data will be preserved complying Data Protection Act (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). The collected data will be used only in this research and nowhere else. Apart for the willingness of the respondents is the major concern that enables this research to disclose the purpose of this research to the respondents at the beginning of this interview. The data collection process will be conducted after receiving the acknowledgement form the assessors and ethical administrators.

Week

Activities

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

9th

10th

11th

12th

Selection of the Topic

Formulating research structure

Aim and objectives

Background and rationale

Developing literature review

Choosing resources

Presenting LR

Identifying methodology

Selection of methods

Selection of tools

Ethical compliance

Submitting proposal

Data collection

Interview planning

Sorting secondary data

Data analysis

Primary data analysis

Secondary data analysis

Findings and discussion

Developing draft

Submitting the Final thesis

References: 

Bhayani, A., 2014. The market route to higher education in UAE: its rationales and implications. International review on public and nonprofit marketing, 11(1), pp.75-87.

Böttiger, B.W., Bossaert, L.L., Castrén, M., Cimpoesu, D., Georgiou, M., Greif, R., Grünfeld, M., Lockey, A., Lott, C., Maconochie, I. and Melieste, R., 2016. Kids Save Lives–ERC position statement on school children education in CPR.:“Hands that help–Training children is training for life”. Resuscitation, 105, pp.A1-A3.

Cao, Z.J., Chen, Y. and Wang, S.M., 2014. Health belief model based evaluation of school health education programme for injury prevention among high school students in the community context. BMC Public Health, 14(1), p.26.

D’Cruz, A.M. and Aradhya, S., 2013. Impact of oral health education on oral hygiene knowledge, practices, plaque control and gingival health of 13?to 15?year?old school children in Bangalore city. International journal of dental hygiene, 11(2), pp.126-133.

Demissie, Z., Brener, N.D., McManus, T., Shanklin, S., Hawkins, J. and Kann, L., 2013. School health profiles 2012: characteristics of health programs among secondary schools.

Hatherley-Greene, P., 2012. Cultural border crossings in the UAE: Improving transitions from high school to higher education (Doctoral dissertation, Curtin University).

Lee, M.J., Hwang, S.O., Cha, K.C., Cho, G.C., Yang, H.J. and Rho, T.H., 2013. Influence of nationwide policy on citizens’ awareness and willingness to perform bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Resuscitation, 84(7), pp.889-894.

Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Meeks, L., Heit, P. and Page, R., 2012. Comprehensive school health education. McGraw-Hill Humanities & Social Sciences.

Neuman, W.L., 2013. Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson education.

Plant, N. and Taylor, K., 2013. How best to teach CPR to schoolchildren: a systematic review. Resuscitation, 84(4), pp.415-421.

Rosenthal, V.D., Bijie, H., Maki, D.G., Mehta, Y., Apisarnthanarak, A., Medeiros, E.A., Leblebicioglu, H., Fisher, D., Álvarez-Moreno, C., Khader, I.A. and Martínez, M.D.R.G., 2012. International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) report, data summary of 36 countries, for 2004-2009. American journal of infection control, 40(5), pp.396-407.

Schwarzer, R., 2014. Self-efficacy: Thought control of action. Taylor & Francis.

Sung, S.C. and Lin, Y.C., 2013. Effectiveness of the sexual healthcare education in nursing students’ knowledge, attitude, and self-efficacy on sexual healthcare. Nurse Education Today, 33(5), pp.498-503.

Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

Tones, K., Robinson, Y.K. and Tilford, S., 2013. Health education: effectiveness and efficiency. Springer