If you have taught--have the child and family learned?

The decade of the 1990s produced significant and, in some instances, irreversible changes in the delivery of health care. Patient and family educational processes did not escape this process. Gone is the luxury of developing, initiating, and completing a teaching plan that allows multiple, brief teaching sessions. Economic realities require nurses to use both their time with patients and their teaching opportunities more efficiently. The text of this article addresses key concepts that nurses must consider in order to effectively educate the child and family. Issues considered are: identifying individual learning styles, determining readiness to learn, accommodating individual learning needs/abilities, determining essential content, and evaluating what has been learned. Several examples of clinically appropriate, easy-to-use assessment tools are included to assist the nurse-teacher in determining ... if you have taught--have the child and family learned?