Factors affecting clinical teaching for pre-service nursing education in Kenya medical training college, Nairobi campus.

Abstract

Training of health workforce is an important element in ensuring delivery of quality health care services. New options for the education and in-service training of health care workers are required to ensure effective preparation and to meet a country's needs. Nursing education in Kenya has faced challenges of shortage of qualified clinical faculty. Over the past five years, there has been a tremendous expansion in nursing education with the colleges offering nursing education and the number of students rapidly increasing. The rapid expansion in nursing education has not been complimented with concurrent increase in the facilities nor the number of available clinical nursing lecturers. This has raised concerns on the effects of faculty shortage on the quality of clinical teaching for pre-service nursing education and ultimately nursing practice. The aim of this study was to assess factors affecting clinical teaching for pre-services nursing education in KMTC, Nairobi Campus. Specific objectives included: to determine the capacity of nurse tutors in clinical teaching for pre-service nursing education, establish the institutional factors affecting clinical teaching for pre-service nursing programme and investigate the quality of clinical teaching methods employed in the pre-service nursing education. Cross-sectonal descriptive study design was adopted. The sample size was 132 comprising of 5 nurse tutors, 7 clinical instructors, 20 nurses and 100 student nurses. Purposive sampling was used to sample the student nurses, while census was used to sample nurse tutors from KMTC, Nairobi campus. Self-administered questionnaire, interviews and record reviews were used for data collection. Data analysis was done using SPSS. The study findings show that majority 23 (72%) of nurse educators were diploma holders and most 25 (78.1%) didn't have any additional training besides the basic nursing education. Most 12 (37.5%) of nurse educators have 2-4 years of experience as nurses or clinical intructors. The numbers of nurse educators were generally low with a nurse instructor to student ratio of 1:10 in placement facilities. 125 (95%) of all respondents agreed that demonstration was the most preferred teaching method for clinical instruction. In addition, 125 (95%) respondents said that experience had the most influence on clinical training. 115(85%) felt that generally health facilities were not adequately prepared to support clinical teaching for pre-service nursing education. The study recommends that: KMTC should enforce policies that ensure nurse tutors have adequate academic qualifications and experience, which correspond to clinical teaching for nursing education; KMTC should work with trainees' health facilities placement, to ensure that there are adequate facilities to support effective clinical training for pre-services nursing education in Kenya; KMTC should review it pre-service nursing curriculum to ensure that it responds to contemporary issues in the nursing professional and KMTC should organize regular on job trainings to update nurse tutors on curriculum contents as well as teaching methods, with an emphasis on clinical skills training. Key words: Clinical training, pre-service, nursing education, Kenya Medical Training College, Kenya.