Curationis
-
In South Africa the main focus is on primary health care. This affects the education and training of nurses, and training schools must respond by developing appropriate teaching modules. A school of nursing developed, implemented and revised a problem- and community-based learning module over a period of three years (1996-1998). ⋯ Conclusions were that clinical teaching was effective within the problem- (PBL) and community-based (CBE) approaches; 78% of respondents were positive about the clinical learning environment; 61% stated that expectations were met; 81% preferred group activities, and 67% indicated that they had developed professional skills. Facilitators agreed that clinical teaching met the requirements of PBL & CBE. The pass rate also improved.
-
The aim of this study was to explore the attitudes and practices of witnessed resuscitation by the staff working in Level I Emergency Departments in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Witnessed resuscitation involves the 'medical' resuscitation of the patient with their relatives or loved ones present in the resuscitation room (Boyd, 2000:171). ⋯ The emergency staff disliked the idea of witnessed resuscitation. They believed it to be a harmful experience for the witnesses, a threat to the resuscitation process and the emergency staff, and impossible to implement in their Emergency Departments. There were however, subtle references made during the interviews that revealed some aspects of witnessed resuscitation that the staff favoured once they had considered the practice. There were no written policies to dictate how the relatives were handled, but all the staff agreed that the relatives were asked to wait outside the resuscitation area, were kept informed and then brought in when the patient was stable or had died. A number of recommendations are suggested in an attempt to introduce witnessed resuscitation as an option in KwaZulu-Natal's Emergency Departments.
-
Community participation has been hailed as the panacea for most community programmes. Community participation at high levels empowers communities, increases self-reliance, self-awareness and confidence in self-examination of problems and seeking solutions for them. ⋯ The purpose of this article is to explore community participation strategies adopted in different countries for providing community health care services. Recommendations are provided for enhancing community participation in developing countries.
-
Although there is general agreement that patient satisfaction is an integral component of service quality, there is a paucity of South African research on reliable and valid satisfaction measures and the effects of health status on satisfaction. A 25-item patient satisfaction scale was developed and tested for evaluating the quality of health care for black diabetic outpatients. It was hypothesised that: (1) the underlying dimensions of patient satisfaction were interpersonal and organisational; and (2) patients in poor health would be less satisfied with the quality of their care than patients in good health. ⋯ These findings provided support for both hypotheses and suggested that patients in poor health attend to different aspects of their care than patients in good health. Of more importance to clinical practice, the results endorsed the need for a multidisciplinary health team comprising nurse/social worker (Factor I: support, communication), health service managers (Factor II: service logistics) and physician (Factor III: technical expertise) to enhance treatment outcome for diabetic patients. It is recommended that: (1) further research is conducted on this patient satisfaction scale with diverse populations in different settings to complement and validate the scale for generalised use in South Africa; (2) the scale is used to collect information on patient satisfaction before and after implementing an intervention to improve the quality of health care, and (3) measurement of health status is an essential adjunct to assessment of patient satisfaction.
-
A phenomenological approach was used to explore the phenomenon, violent death, from the perspective of trauma care nurses working in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Three relatively unstructured interviews were undertaken on an individual basis with each lasting thirty to forty-five minutes long. The researchers applied the principle of theoretical saturation and a total of seven participants from three level-one trauma units were included in the study. ⋯ The trauma care nurses conceptualized violent death as being sudden, unpredictable, senseless and not as dignified or peaceful as a non-violent death. A number of issues that made confronting violent death difficult were raised and the trauma care nurses described a number of emotional and physical reactions that they experienced due to exposure to these situations. A number of recommendations were suggested for the trauma care nurses, nursing management, nurse educators and for future research in an attempt to prevent the loss of these valuable nurses from the nursing profession.