Browsing by Author "Doughty, Valerie Dolores"
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- ItemThe experiences of nurses regarding attendance, engagement and accessibility of continuous professional development at a tertiary hospital, eastern region, Saudi Arabia(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Doughty, Valerie Dolores; Schutte, Loraine; Kaura, Doreen K.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Nursing & Midwifery.ENGLISH SUMMARY : Background: Continuous professional development (CPD) is known as never ending learning for a nurse after his/her basic nursing training. The primary and common goal of CPD in the nursing field is to improve patient care and outcomes. CPD in nursing results in nurses becoming safe practitioners by providing high-quality care for the safety of the patients. The research aims of this study was to investigate and describe the experiences of nurses employed at a tertiary hospital in Saudi Arabia about CPD accessibility, attendance, and engagement. The objectives of the study are to: • explore the experiences of nurses on accessibility to CPD activities • explore the factors influencing their decision making and which activities they want to attend • explore and describe their engagement during CPD attendance and • explore and describe how relevant, they find the CPD activities that they attend. Methods: The methodology in this study was a qualitative descriptive design, approached by exploring and describing what nurses experience regarding CPD accessibility, attendance, and engagement. A sample of ten participants was purposefully selected who worked for more than one year at the study setting, and were already exposed to CPD. Prior to each interview, participants signed a consent form which included voice recording the information gathered during the interview. The researcher developed a semi-structured interview guided by the objectives and used it for individual interviews. Open-ended questions were used for ten semi-structured individual interviews. The interviews terminated after participant ten when no more new information could be obtained from the participants. Creswell’s six-step model of data analysis guided the researcher with data analysis. Approval to conduct the study was obtained from the Health Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the University of Stellenbosch Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and from the institution where the research was conducted. To ensure trustworthiness the four principles of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability were followed. Findings: The researcher has identified that professional nurses need CPD to guide them in their practice for their entire professional life. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the sample of professional nurses that was interviewed clearly understand that professional development is important to meet their personal development needs. Therefore, the professional nurses in this study indicated that they must remain well-informed regarding updated information and evidence-based practices. Subsequently, the findings indicate the awareness of professional responsibility that nurses have of this study to participate in CPD to meet practice licensure, contractual requirements, and completion of mandated competencies. However, it was found that nurses also encountered delayed completion of expectations due to night duty and physical exhaustion. The findings also indicate that the organization has a well-structured CPD approach, while some professional nurses in this study indicated family responsibilities, staff shortages, financial, and accommodation constraints as factors that influence their choices and attendance to CPD. However, the findings include what the professional nurses encountered concerning numerous positive outcomes, and motivational factors that influenced their participation and engagement with CPD. Conclusion: It is evident that nurses accepted and understood their professional responsibility to comply with CPD requirements. Moreover, numerous benefits and positive outcomes resulted from CPD participation. To support nurses in meeting these requirements the organization provides nurses with CPD programmes and the application of adult learning principles in delivering the programmes. However, nurses’ stress levels and frustration increased while they improved their knowledge and to be better equipped in their skills, their abilities were impeded by the lack of financial support, scheduling, and staff shortages. Reviewing hospital policies involving payments for life-support courses and providing financial support for some courses can ease financial payments. This includes providing courses locally to minimize stress with financial issues to attend CPD in other provinces. Involving nurses in choices of CPD topics, and education facilitators developing educational programmes focussed on identified training needs can also minimize nurses’ stress levels. In addition to new developed educational programmes, flexible, frequent, scheduling times, together with nurse managers can enable nurses to attend CPD during working hours. Expediting recruitment processes can minimize staff shortages and extra workload issues.