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Background: Nurses contribute the largest portion of Uganda's health workforce providing care to individuals of all ages and communities. However, despite the growing number of the elderly population in Uganda with improved life expectancy, there is hardly any study that has looked at the elderly health care competencies in the nursing training programs at various levels. This paper provides an overview of the gaps in elderly health care competencies in nursing education in Uganda. Methods: We conducted a descriptive qualitative cross-sectional study that involved document review, Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with nursing leaders, and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with faculty at all levels of nursing training and nurses in practice. Data was analyzed using latent and manifest content analysis with Open Code software 4.03. Common categories were identified and incorporated into a matrix to create themes. Results: Almost all the curricula and minimum standards for training nurses at certificate, diploma, and degree levels lack a module and nursing competencies on elderly nursing care. This is aggravated by a lack of faculty trained in elderly health care skills, and a lack of specialized wards for nursing elderly care clinical training among others. Conclusions: There is hardly any elderly health care training module and elderly nursing competencies at all levels of nursing training in Uganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hospital and university service providers invest significant but separate resources into preparing registered nurses to work in the emergency department setting. This results in the duplication of both curricula and resource investment in the health and higher education sectors. This paper describes an evidence-based co-designed study with clinical-academic stakeholders from hospital and university settings. Methods: The study was informed by evidence-based co-design, using emergency nursing as an exemplar. Eighteen hours of co-design workshops were completed with 21 key clinical-academic stakeholders from hospital and university settings. Results: Outcomes were matrices synchronising professional and regulatory imperatives of postgraduate nursing coursework; mutually-shaped curriculum content, teaching approaches and assessment strategies relevant for postgraduate education; a new University-Industry Academic Integration Framework; five agreed guiding principles of postgraduate curriculum development for university-industry curriculum co-design; and a Graduate Certificate of Emergency Nursing curriculum exemplar. Conclusion: Industry-academic service provider co-design can increase the relevance of postgraduate specialist courses in nursing, strengthening the nexus between both entities to advance learning and employability. The study developed strategies and exemplars for future use in any mutually determined academic-industry education partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In Ghana, studies documenting the effectiveness of evidence-based specialized training programs to promote respectful maternity care (RMC) practices in healthcare facilities are few. Thus, we designed a four-day RMC training workshop and piloted it with selected midwives of a tertiary healthcare facility in Kumasi, Ghana. The present paper evaluated the impact of the training by exploring midwives' experiences of implementing RMC knowledge in their daily maternity care practices 4 months after the training workshop. Methods: Through a descriptive qualitative research design, we followed-up and conducted 14 in-depth interviews with participants of the RMC training, exploring their experiences of applying the acquired RMC knowledge in their daily maternity care practices. Data were managed and analysed using NVivo 12. Codes were collapsed into subthemes and assigned to three major predetermined themes. Results: The findings have been broadly categorized into three themes: experiences of practising RMC in daily maternity care, health facility barriers to practising RMC, and recommendations for improving RMC practices. The midwives mentioned that applying the newly acquired RMC knowledge has positively improved their relationship with childbearing women, assisted them to effectively communicate with the women, and position them to recognize the autonomy of childbearing women. Despite the positive influence of the training on clinical practice, the midwives said the policy and the built environment in the hospital does not support the exploration of alternative birthing positions. Also, the hospital lacked the required logistics to ensure privacy for multiple childbearing women in the open labour ward. The midwives recommended that logistics for alternative birthing positions and privacy in the ward should be provided. Also, all midwives and staff of the hospital should be taken through the RMC training program to encourage good practice. Conclusion: Despite the report of some RMC implementation challenges, the midwives noted that the 4-day RMC training has had a positive impact on their maternity caregiving practice in the hospital. Policies and programs aimed at addressing the issue of disrespect and abusive practices during maternity care should advocate and include the building of facilities that support alternative birthing positions and privacy of childbearing women during childbirth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Professional nursing practice is informed by biological, social and behavioural sciences. In undergraduate pre-registration nursing programs, biological sciences typically include anatomy, physiology, microbiology, chemistry, physics and pharmacology. The current gap in the literature results in a lack of information about the content and depth of biological sciences being taught in nursing curricula. The aim of this study was to establish what priority is given to the teaching of science topics in these programs in order to inform an understanding of the relative importance placed on this subject area in contemporary nursing education. Method: This study employed a cross-sectional survey method. This paper reports on the first phase of a larger project examining science content in nursing programs. An existing questionnaire was modified and delivered online for completion by academics who teach science to nurses in these programs. This paper reports on the relative priority given by respondents to the teaching of 177 topics contained in the questionnaire. Results: Of the relatively small population of academics who teach science to nursing students, thirty (n = 30) completed the survey. Findings indicate strong support for the teaching of science in these programs, with particular priority given to the basic concepts of bioscience and gross system anatomy. Of concern, most science subject areas outside of these domains were ranked as being of moderate or low priority. Conclusion: While the small sample size limited the conclusions able to be drawn from this study, the findings supported previous studies that indicated inadequacies in the teaching of science content in nursing curricula. Nevertheless, these findings have raised questions about the current philosophy that underpins nursing education in Australia and whether existing practices are clearly focused on preparing students for the demands of contemporary nursing practice. Academics responsible for the design and implementation of nursing curricula are encouraged to review the content of current programs in light of the findings of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A competitive Carrick Institute Competitive Grant (CG7-523) was obtained to explore what skills were taught and what assessment of practice approaches were used in nursing programmes in Australia. The intention was twofold; firstly to identify what skills were being taught which would contribute to the development of an assessment of practice toolkit for eligibility to practice programmes in Australia. This paper specifically reports on the skills taught in nursing programmes in Australia. Methods: A qualitative research methodology was used through a documentary analysis of university curriculum documents. This was undertaken independently by two researchers; the data was then reviewed by an expert group. The skills taught were explored, listed and categorised using a conceptual framework, then refined and reported. Results: Over 1300 skills were initially identified within nursing programmes across Australia; these were ‘clustered' using a framework into 30 skills areas. These included psychomotor skills to skills areas that relate to human factors such as communication, team work, leadership and supervision. Conclusions: A wide range of skills were referred to in university nursing programme curriculae in Australia. There were some significant variations; some universities taught their student nurses how to manage a client/patient requiring external invasive ventilator support. There were however a number of similar skills areas identified; such as acute care assessment skills (monitoring vital signs) and mental health assessment skills. The range of skills taught within nursing curriculum is challenging as there is only limited time to expose students to those skills and afford the student the opportunity to practice those skills in order to achieve competence prior to registration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]