Learning needs assessment for continuous professional development in paediatric acute care nursing: the Eswatini project

Abstract

Background: In the year 2012, the Nursing Council of Eswatini introduced mandatory continuous professional development (CPD) for all nurses including Qualified Nursing Assistants. However, despite this move, the learning opportunities provided for nurses working in the paediatric acute care settings have so far been provided on an ad hoc basis, without prior investigation of their learning needs through systematic learning needs assessments (LNA). Literature has shown that unless specific learning needs of frontline nurses are known, it remains impossible to provide meaningfully targeted CPD activities.

Setting: The study was undertaken in the paediatric and neonatal units/wards of six (6) public hospitals of Eswatini, including four (4) government owned (Mbabane, Hlathikhulu, Mankayane and Pigg’s Peak) and two (2) mission owned (Good Shepherd and Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Mission) hospitals.

Purpose of the Study: The study sought to identify, describe and compare the learning needs of Registered Nurses (RNs) and Qualified Nursing Assistants (QNAs working in the paediatric and neonatal units in Eswatini to provide a basis for which CPD programmes to meet these needs can be planned and implemented Methods: A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive and comparative study was undertaken to recruit 103 respondents from a population of 110 nurses (86 RNs +24 QNAs) using census sampling. A self-administered Hicks-Hennessy Training Needs Analysis (H-HTNA) questionnaire was adapted and used with permission from the authors as a data collection instrument for this research. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including the Student’s t test, ANOVA and Mann-Witney U test, were all performed at the α 0.05 level of significance to analyse the data. Results: The study reported 15 high level learning needs including research, clinical examination of a neonate/child ,using technical equipment, appraising one’s performance, pain management, death and dying and health promotion. These learning needs were further categorised into five H-HTNA super categories, with the Research/Audit super category leading on average. Reporting these learning needs were 55% (n=11) of the QNA group and 43% (n=36) of the RN group and 46% (n= 47) of the entire sample. The open-ended section of the research yielded 16 categories of learning needs, which were skewed towards clinical skills and direct care of neonates and children. There was no statistically significant difference in the overall learning needs scores between the RNs and QNAs.

Recommendations from this study are to sensitise in-service planners and providers on the necessity of learning needs assessments studies as a yardstick to determine what nurses in paediatric settings need to learn. Planning and implementation of CPD activities on the nursing care of paediatric with critical conditions, integrated management of childhood illnesses MCI, handling paediatric emergencies and paediatric resuscitation as a matter of priority. Ultimately, this study recommends the strengthening of undergraduate curriculum on paediatric nursing and to a larger extent, the introduction of child nursing speciality programmes in the Eswatini nursing education institutions.