Curriculum objectives and contents as precursors of procedure competence of community Health Extension Worker Trainees in Public Colleges of Health Technology, Southwestern, Nigeria

Abstract

There have been challenges of competence among Curriculum Health Extension Workers Trainees (CHEWT) in handling basic health procedures. This might be attributable to the inadequacy of the curriculum contents and objectives. This study therefore examined curriculum contents and objectives as precursors of procedure competence of CHEWT in Public Colleges of Health Technology (CoHT), South-Western Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design (the correlational type) while purposive sampling technique was used to select 226 of the 300level CHEWT (final year students that have almost completed the programme based on the contents and objectives of the curriculum) in the community health department (the only department that trains community health extension trainees) in six public CoHT, in each state. Student questionnaire with reliability coefficient of 0.93 and Student Practical Skills Test with reliability coefficient of 0.93 were used for data collection and multiple regression for the analysis at 0.05 level of significance. Adequate and relevant curriculum contents (ARCC) (F2,223 = 0.75) and Adequate and relevant curriculum objectives (ARCO) (F2,223 = 1.79) had no significant joint and relative contributions to procedure competence of CHEWT. The four variables when collectively taken together had no composite and relative contribution (F2,223 = 1.10) to procedure competence. Curriculum objectives and contents are not sufficient to determine procedure competence of CHEWT. Other factors can be investigated to understand the reason for the challenges in the procedure competence of CHEWT.