RESEARCH ARTICLE


Transforming Nursing Education to Strengthen Health System in Malawi: An Exploratory Study



Thokozani Bvumbwe1, *, Ntombifikile Gloria Mtshali2
1 Faculty of Health Sciences, Mzuzu University, Mzuzu, Malawi
2 School of Nursing and Public Health, University of KwaZulu Natal, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa


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Creative Commons License
© 2018 Bvumbwe et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to the author at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Mzuzu University, Mzuzu, Malawi; Tel: +2650994854846; E-mail thoko76@gmail.com


Abstract

Background:

Malawi made great strides to increase the number of nurses through the Emergency Human Resource for Health Program. However, quantity of health workforce alone is not adequate to strengthen the health system. Malawi still reports skill mix imbalance and geographical mal-distribution of the nursing workforce. Health systems must continuously adapt and evolve according to the health care needs and inform health professionals’ education to accelerate gains in health outcomes. The Lancet Commission reported that health professionals’ education has generally not lived up pace with health care demands.

Objectives:

The aim of this study was to describe the strategies being implemented in Malawi to improve nursing education. Specifically, the objectives of the study were to explore strategies being implemented, identify stakeholders and their targets in order to share practices with countries experiencing similar nursing education challenges.

Methods:

This was a cross sectional descriptive study with a concurrent mixed method design. One hundred and sixty participants including nurse practitioners and educators responded to a questionnaire. Fifteen nurse practitioners and eight nurse educators were also engaged in one to one interview.

Results:

Respondents showed varied opinion on how nursing education is being implemented. Six themes as regards strategies being implemented to improve nursing education emerged namely- capacity building, competency based curriculum, regulation, clinical learning environment, transformative teaching and infrastructure/ resources.

Conclusion:

Findings of this study show that the strategies being implemented to improve nursing education are relevant to closing the gap between health care needs and nursing education.

Keywords: Malawi, Nursing education, Quality, Quantity, Relevance, Strategies, Tranformng, Scale up.