Community health workers training on infant hearing health: information retention

PURPOSE:to investigate the information retention provided to Community Health Workers on infant hearing health training.METHODS:the sample was composed of 24 Community Health Workers prior trained through a cybertutor, a based web education system. The content was ranging from prevention to rehabilitation of hearing impairment. Immediately after training, the Community Health Workers answered a multiple choice questionnaire with 20 questions, divided into domains (1: general concepts; 2: type, prevention and causes of hearing impairment; 3: Techniques of identification and diagnosis of the hearing impairment; 4: general aspects of hearing impairment). The same questionnaire was applied one more time after 15 months. The information retention level was analyzed comparing performance in the evaluations by the Wilcoxon test and the significance level adopted was 5%.RESULTS:it was verified a significant decrease (p = 0.03) in percentage, of the Community Health Workers general knowledge on infant hearing health (73,5±8,4/66,7±12,5). In the analysis by domains it was possible to see a worsening in 1(76,4±14,7/58,3±22,5), 2 (72,9±30,3/64,6±19,4) and 3 (69,4±14,5/68,8±17,2) domains, it was significant in 1 domain (p = 0.012). Regarding to 4 domain, there was a slight improvement (76,0±11,6/78,1±11,2).CONCLUSION:it was observed significant decrease of the Community Health Workers knowledge on infant hearing health, which demonstrates that the community health workers training should occur continuously.