Introduction
In the article, “Nursing education challenges and solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: an integrative review,” the authors sought to investigate the challenges of nursing education in sub-Saharan Africa and the solutions for improving nursing education. The authors note that the sub-Saharan region continuously reports an increased burden of communicable diseases and HIV/AIDS due to inadequate healthcare workers (Bvumbwe and Mtshali 2). This article confirms that the problem mentioned exists because of poor nursing education system which is not adaptive to the changing healthcare needs, resulting in skill mismatch, poor health services, and understaffing of medical centers.
Research Methods
The authors thoroughly searched information on Google Scholar, PubMed, and Medline on EBSCOhost. They used keywords that included challenges, nursing education, and Africa. All informational sources used in this research were published between 2012 and 2016 and helped in exploring reports regarding challenges and nursing education in sub-Saharan Africa (Bvumbwe and Mitshali 2). Dvumbwe and Mtshali ascertained the relevance of the sources used in this research after studying their titles and abstracts (Bvumbwe and Mitshali 2). As a result, the findings in this article qualify for use in the development of other research articles by other researchers.
Statistical Data Analysis
Thematic analysis was used by the authors to appraise the data they found in the research sources. Additionally, the authors extracted the research data and coded it into a useful framework (Bvumbwe and Mitshali 3). This coded data was then assembled into specific subgroups after being converted from the displayed individual sources. Further, Duvumbwe and Mitshali conducted a thorough comparison of each item to ensure the grouping together of similar data. After comparing and grouping data, the authors embarked on establishing distinct patterns, relationships, themes, and variations to enable them to draw insightful conclusions. Both Duvumbwe and Mtshali, appraised the articles independently to enhance the reliability of their research (Duvumbwe and Mitshali 3). Therefore, other researchers can use the findings of this article in developing the literature review of their work.
Results and Discussion
The researchers conducted an information search from several credible secondary sources. As result, the authors searched data from 1434 sources on various online sites (Bvumbwe and Mitshali 3). Out of these, 1287 sources were from the EBSCOhost database, and 58 and 84 records were from PubMed and Google Scholar, respectively (Bvumbwe and Mitshali 3). In addition, the authors also used five grey sources from experts. However, out of the 1434 sources, abstracts from 1380 studies were not useful to this study because they contained general information about healthcare professional education or nursing education unrelated to Sub-Saharan Africa (Bvumbwe, and Mitshali 3). In addition, the authors also excluded 29 sources because they did not address either solutions or challenges of nursing education (Bvumbwe, and Mitshali 4). Lastly, the researchers found five grey materials and 20 relevant records to include in developing their article (Bvumbwe, and Mitshali 3). As a result, themes such as capacity building, professional regulation, infrastructure and resources, curriculum reforms, transformative strategies of teaching, and collaboration and partnership emerged (Bvumbwe, and Mitshali 4). Findings from the above sources confirmed that nursing education challenges and solutions were similar in the Sub-Saharan African countries thus requiring common solutions.
Conclusion, Recommendations and Relevance
This article concluded that most Sub-Saharan African countries had similar problems and solutions regarding nursing education which included overpopulated institutions, poor capacity building in faculties, and limited infrastructure and resources. As a result, research findings concluded that there is a need for partners to solve nursing education problems in Sub-Saharan countries by increasing faculty capacity, improving curriculum responsiveness, promoting strong regulatory frameworks, and ensuring infrastructure and resource availability. This review is relevant because it adds to the existing knowledge on how stakeholders should solve the current challenges facing nursing education within the sub-Saharan countries.
Work Cited
Bvumbwe, Thokozani, and Ntombifikile Mtshali. “Nursing Education Challenges and Solutions in Sub Saharan Africa: An Integrative Review.” BMC Nursing, vol. 17, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1–11.