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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]

Introduction: In the changing healthcare landscape, a strong professional identity serves as a cornerstone for nurses. Therefore, transformative educational approaches that include professional judgement, reasoning, critical self-evaluation and a sense of accountability are required to foster professional identity. We explored the understanding and barriers to professional identity formation among recent graduates and students of midwifery and nursing in Uganda. Methods: A descriptive qualitative research design employing focus groups was used to collect data from student nurses and midwives from Makerere University, Mbarara University, and recent graduates in nursing and midwifery programs attending their internship training at Mulago National and Mbarara Regional Referral hospitals. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: A total of 33 students and 26 recent graduates participated in the study. The participants who reported understanding Professional identity in nursing and midwifery mentioned that these are principles, characteristics and values, competencies, ethics and code of conduct, sense of belonging and professionalism that define the nursing profession and practice. Barriers to the formation of professional identity were provided under two themes: education and health service delivery. The education theme included subthemes like nursing educators not working in clinical settings and inadequate clinical mentoring. Under the health service delivery theme, subthemes emerged included high workload, lack of interprofessional collaboration, many levels of nursing and midwifery practice, no clear scope of practice for different levels of nursing and midwifery practice, Low esteem among nurses and midwives, media and lack of policy implementation. Conclusion and recommendation: Participants were knowledgeable about professional identity in nursing/midwifery. They faced several challenges and barriers in professional identity formation during their training and internship. We recommend a need to streamline the scope of practice and enhance clinical mentorship and engagement of leadership in nursing in developing professional identity among students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nurses' involvement in health policy development ensures that health services are: safe, effective, available and inexpensive. Nursing history reveals several legendary nurse leaders who have influenced policy and the course of nursing and health care. In the recent times there have been concerns regarding the availability of effective leaders physically, symbolically and functionally at clinical, organizational and national levels, who can effectively influence health policy. Exerting influence in the policy arena requires that nurse leaders acquire attributes that enable them to be effective in policy development activity. This paper reports part of a larger study whose purpose included: “build consensus on leadership attributes necessary for nurse leaders' participation in health policy development in East Africa”. Method: A Delphi survey was utilized and included the following criteria: expert panelists, three iterative rounds, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and building consensus. The study included purposively selected sample of national nurse leaders (expert panelists) from the three East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The study was conducted in three iterative rounds. Seventy eight (78) expert panelists were invited to participate in the study and 37 (47%) participated in the first round of these; 24 (64.8%) participated in the second round and all invited in the third round 24 (100%) participated. Data collection was done using questionnaires and collected qualitative and quantitative data. Data analysis was done utilizing the principles of qualitative analysis in the first round and descriptive statistics in the second and third rounds. Results: The study achieved consensus on the essential leadership attributes for nurse leaders' participation in health policy and include being able to: influence; communicate effectively; build relationships; feel empowered and demonstrate professional credibility. Conclusions: For nursing to participate in influencing the health policy and the health of the population, it will need to develop nurses with leadership attributes who are able to inspire change and influence the policy development process within the context where it exists. The leadership attributes identified in this study can be utilized to develop programmes geared to support nurses' participation in health policy activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]