scholarly journals Assessing primary health care nurses knowledge toward immunizations: A quantitative study

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebtesam Abdulla ◽  
Jessie Johnson ◽  
Sadia Munir ◽  
Robin O'Dwyer

Background: The current nursing workforce needs to be skilled, confident, and competent to address the rapid change in Primary Health Care services, to align with the National Vision of Qatar. This is emphasized in the Primary Health Care Strategy 2018-2023. This strategy outlines the need of having a skilled nursing workforce to administer and educate the public about the importance of immunizations. Primary Health Care nurses emanate from several nationalities and hence possess various level of knowledge and background related to immunization administration. Design and methods:  To assess Primary Health Care nurses’ knowledge before and after the delivered immunization education program in Qatar. The study was part of a Sequential mixed method research study that aimed to assess the Primary Health Care nurses’ knowledge, attitude, and practice of nurses before and after the conducted training program. A self-administered survey, specifically developed for the research project was loaded in Qualtrics and sent to participants of the immunization education program before and after training. Participants were trained in two cohorts from October to December, 2018 in Qatar. For the purposes of this paper, data about the immunization knowledge was statistically analyzed using the SPSS Software version 25 and Microsoft Excel.Results: Specific areas were identified as knowledge gaps among the participants of the two cohorts. Moreover, the developed education program showed overall improvement in the participants’ knowledge.Conclusions: The study results have demonstrated that the delivered immunization education program significantly increases the participants’ knowledge about immunization in certain areas of the primary healthcare clinics they work, including vaccine safety, efficiency, and contraindications in the delivery of vaccines to the public.

Author(s):  
Joia S. Mukherjee

This chapter outlines the historical roots of health inequities. It focuses on the African continent, where life expectancy is the shortest and health systems are weakest. The chapter describes the impoverishment of countries by colonial powers, the development of the global human rights framework in the post-World War II era, the impact of the Cold War on African liberation struggles, and the challenges faced by newly liberated African governments to deliver health care through the public sector. The influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s neoliberal economic policies is also discussed. The chapter highlights the shift from the aspiration of “health for all” voiced at the Alma Ata Conference on Primary Health Care in 1978, to the more narrowly defined “selective primary health care.” Finally, the chapter explains the challenges inherent in financing health in impoverished countries and how user fees became standard practice.


Author(s):  
Khalid Alabbasi ◽  
Estie Kruger ◽  
Marc Tennant

<b><i>Purpose:</i></b> Excessive delays and emergency department (ED) overcrowding have become an increasingly major problem for public health worldwide. This study was to assess the key strategies adopted by an ED, at a public hospital in Jeddah, to reduce delays and streamline patient flow. <b><i>Materials and Methods:</i></b> This study was a service evaluation for a Saudi patient population of all age-groups who attended the ED of a public hospital for the period between June 2016 and July 2019. The Saudi initiative to reduce the ED visits at the King Abdullah Medical Complex hospital has started on August 7, 2018. The initiative was to apply an urgency transfer policy which outlines the procedures to follow when patients arrive to the ED where they are reviewed based on the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS). Patients with less-urgent conditions (category 4 and 5) are referred to a primary health-care practice (where a family medicine consultant is available). Patients with urgent conditions (category 1–3) are referred to a specialized health-care centre if the service is not currently provided. To test the effectiveness of ED initiative on reducing the overcrowd, data were categorized into before and after the initiative. The bivariate analysis χ<sup>2</sup> tests and 2 sample <i>t</i>-tests were run to explore the relationship of gender and age with dependent variable emergency. <b><i>Results:</i></b> A total of 233,998 patients were included in this study, 61.8% of them were males and the average age of ED patients were 35.5 ± 18.6 years. The majority of cases were those classified as “less urgent” (CTAS 4), which accounted for 65.4%. Number of ED visits before and after the initiative was 67 and 33%, respectively. ED waiting times after the initiative have statistically significantly decreased across all acuity levels compared to ED waiting times before the initiative. <b><i>Conclusion and Implication:</i></b> The findings suggest that the majority of patients arrive to the ED with less-urgent conditions and arrived by walking-in. The number of cases attending the ED significantly decreased following the introduction of the urgency transfer policy. Referral for less-urgent patients to primary health-care centre may be an important front-end operational strategy to relieve congestion.


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saulat Jahan ◽  
Basem Henary

Research in primary health care (PHC) is underdeveloped and scarce, especially in developing countries. It is important to understand the attitudes and aspirations of PHC physicians for the promotion of research. The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes of PHC physician managers toward research in Qassim province and to identify barriers that impede performing research in the PHC system. The study was based on social cognitive theory framework, and was pre-experimental with a ‘one-group pre-test–post-test’ design. The study participants were physician managers in PHC administration, Qassim. The participants’ attitudes were measured by adapting statements from the Attitude Towards Research scale. The intervention was the 1-day training program ‘Introduction to Research in Primary Health Care’. A total of 23 PHC physicians participated in the study. The mean age of the participants was 45.4 (±1.6) years, and the mean years of work experience was 16.2 (±2.2) years. Only one participant had an article published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results of the study showed that PHC physicians had a baseline positive attitude toward research that was further enhanced after participating in an introductory research-training program. During the pre-test, out of the total score of 63, the mean score on attitude toward research was 48.35 (±6.8) while the mean total attitude score in the post-test was 49.7 (±6.6). However, the difference was not statistically significant at P < 0.05. The item with the highest score regarded the role of research in the improvement of health care services, while the lowest-scoring item was about support from administration to conduct research. The participants recognised lack of skills, lack of training and inadequate resources as major barriers in conducting research. Our study results suggest that the PHC physicians’ positive attitudes toward research can be further improved through in-service training. To promote research in PHC in Qassim, regular research-training programs and incentives for conducting research should be provided to the PHC physicians.


2014 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Daly ◽  
Timothy Kenealy ◽  
Bruce Arroll ◽  
Nicolette Sheridan ◽  
Robert Scragg

Author(s):  
Elizabeth Halcomb ◽  
Christine Ashley ◽  
Sharon James ◽  
Elizabeth Smyth

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Sarah L. Hewitt ◽  
Nicolette F. Sheridan ◽  
Karen Hoare ◽  
Jane E. Mills

Limited knowledge about the nursing workforce in New Zealand general practice inhibits the optimal use of nurses in this increasingly complex setting. Using workforce survey data published biennially by the Nursing Council of New Zealand, this study describes the characteristics of nurses in general practice and contrasts them with the greater nursing workforce, including consideration of changes in the profiles between 2015 and 2019. The findings suggest the general practice nursing workforce is older, less diverse, more predominately New Zealand trained and very much more likely to work part-time than other nurses. There is evidence that nurses in general practice are increasingly primary health care focused, as they take on expanded roles and responsibilities. However, ambiguity about terminology and the inability to track individuals in the data are limitations of this study. Therefore, it was not possible to identify and describe cohorts of nurses in general practice by important characteristics, such as prescribing authority, regionality and rurality. A greater national focus on defining and tracking this pivotal workforce is called for to overcome role confusion and better facilitate the use of nursing scopes of practice.


Curationis ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bornman ◽  
E. Alant ◽  
L.L. Lloyd

This article focuses on the importance of primary health care nurses’ involvement in the identification of children with severe disabilities, early and appropriate intervention that includes referral, as well as the provision of support to the children’s caregivers. The use of multiskilling as a strategy to train nurses to fulfil this role is described. The traditional roles of community nurses are explored within the disability paradigm, with specific reference to multi-skilling. Finally, research results following the implementation of the Beginning Communication Intervention Protocol (BCIP), which uses multiskilling as a training strategy, are described. Recommendations for further research are then provided.


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