Graduate Tracer Study of the Faculty of Nursing University of Tripoli, Libya: An Evidenced-Based Information for Curriculum Update and its Implications in Quality Assurance

The Faculty of Nursing ensures the quality of education it provides is suitable to the health needs to meet the demands and challenges of health care in the country. Deemed to produce future nursing leaders and educators, the faculty has undertaken its first graduate tracer study. Graduate tracer studies obtain both intrinsic and extrinsic results and benefits. Intrinsic results can be used to point at areas for improvement in study programs and service delivery at universities. The study, based on the Commission on Higher Education-adapted survey questionnaire filled in by the Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates batch 2011-2017. With descriptive-normative research design and snowball sampling technique, smoothed the way for 126 respondents out of 189 graduates. Data showed a predominance of females over males, single over married, mostly within 2528 years of age. Majority were employed as full time in a government health facility, as well as with satisfaction in their work as a nurse ascribable to monetary remuneration. The job placement rate of the graduates is 65%, filling in the shortage of nurses in Libya. The competency-based curriculum is consistent, aligned and relevant to the nursing job requirements in Libya. Accorded well to the World Health Organization’s patient safety curriculum, ‘Safe and Quality Nursing Care’ competency appraised as the most used in their area of nurse work. Followed by ‘communication’, ‘human relations’, ‘research’, ‘problem solving’, and ‘leadership’. ‘Critical thinking’ however deemed as least used competency in the care of patients. The study recommends regular graduates tracking, further curriculum development and policy on educational achievement as one of the criteria for remuneration. Furthermore, researches on topics related to extent of knowledge and application of the learned competencies in nursing education, employability and the employers’ preferences on employability of the graduates, job satisfaction and its factors among graduates and competencies used by nurse-employed and non-nurse employed nursing graduates. Lastly, an assessment of the faculty’s program and learning is essential for teaching innovations’ upgrade and development not to disregard strategies to improve critical thinking abilities and use among nurses in their area of practice. This is to achieve the end goal of this present study, to entrench quality assurance within the faculty from the evidenced-information in distinction to the voice of its graduates.

Perceptions of Employability Skills of Newly Qualified Nursing Graduates from the University of Namibia

The period of transition from being a student nurse to a professional nurse remains the most traumatic and stressful period for newly qualified nursing graduates. These graduates are expected to adapt to the working environment while they are still under scrutiny to see whether they have acquired sufficient knowledge, skills and confidence to practise safe nursing care. This study aimed to determine and describe the perceptions of employers regarding the employability skills of newly qualified nursing graduates from the School of Nursing at the University of Namibia. A total of 168 nursing service managers from four public hospitals and two private hospitals were invited to participate in the study during 2019. Altogether 114 (68%) participants completed a self-administered questionnaire. The findings of this study showed a relatively low rating of 37 (32.5%) participants who had observed weak performance in the skills of newly qualified nursing graduates regarding invasive procedures and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). These skills were mostly rated as poor, fair or average. There was no association between observing poor skills with invasive procedures and the number of employees’ years of experience, ?2 (24)>= 24.070, p=0.239. Findings in this study call for well-articulated plans from nurse educators and faculty members to implement immediate actions to address the issues highlighted in this study.

Educational innovation in the comprehensive training of nursing graduates

A multi and interdisciplinary teamwork was developed on the integration of basic sciences among themselves and their contribution to professional training. Work was done on the identification of essentialities, organization and structuring of contents according to the requirements and precedence relationships of the Nursing discipline. The general objective was to identify the interdisciplinary relationships between the basic sciences of the nursing career to improve the quality of teaching. A qualitative and descriptive study was carried out through a historical-logical analysis based on documents, syllables, teachers of the basic training semesters and students. Interviews with teachers and student surveys were applied and it was found that there is a need to develop methodological career work aimed at disciplinary integration. Failures were detected such as an inadequate perception of the students about the role of interdisciplinarity in their training, no planning of methodological career activities that promote interdisciplinarity, dissatisfaction with integration in knowledge-integrating projects, and the need for methodological proposals for the interdisciplinarity from the first year of the degree. An integration of the contents was achieved with an inter and transdisciplinary approach, which is recognized as having a favorable impact on academic success and the quality of teacher training.