Designing and evaluating therapeutic education tools for people living with HIV

Abstract

To describe the process of designing education tools for patients living with HIV and evaluate their use by African caregivers-educators. An eight-step participatory and formative process was carried out to design educational tools. Twenty-one caregivers-educators from nine French-speaking African countries in three focus groups were interviewed on the way in which they used these tools. Fourteen people were trained in the process of designing the tools and training caregivers-educators in their use. Two toolkits were developed (adults and children/adolescents). The image folder was the tool most commonly used. Educators in all countries used tools to address self-care and psychosocial coping skills. The criteria for choosing the tools were linked to their attractiveness, ease of use, their adaptation to the patient's needs and characteristics, and the degree of mastery by the caregiver-educator. The tools helped to structure the education sessions. Brakes to their use were organizational and lack of experience or mastery. The participatory and formative approach enabled educators working with patients living with HIV in French-speaking Africa to appropriate the tools. Training was a crucial step in enabling caregiver-educators to master and disseminate the tools, and design new tools.