Handwashing Education with School-Age Children
Author: Emma Anderson, Taylor Caverzasi, Kelly Lyall, Jessica Sellars, and Shelby English,
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Lydia Watkins and Dr. Sarah Hartman
Abstract:
During the Pediatric Nursing course, we focused our Service-Learning project on health promotion, primarily relaying the importance of handwashing to children at a local school. Through developmentally appropriate educational sessions, we were able to help the children envision the importance of handwashing to help prevent illness. Through collaboration with students in School of Education we determined the best way to educate each age group which included kindergarten, first and fourth grades. We designed a creative hand washing experiment for the students in order to teach proper hand hygiene. By the end of the day, the students demonstrate proper hand washing techniques and could identify the appropriate times to wash their hands. Throughout this project, the nursing students collaborated with the School of Education teacher candidate students as a grant was written, received, current age-appropriate books related to the education topic were identified, purchased, and given to the schools, and bulletin boards were developed to further the teaching of this topic in the school.
