Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa
Background: Strengthening the provision of emergency health services, including the nursing workforce, is progress towards decreasing the burden of injury in sub-Saharan Africa. The WHO Essential Trauma Care Guidelines provide minimum knowledge and skills to ensure quality in-hospital trauma care. O...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2014-05-01
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| Series: | The Lancet Global Health |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X15700252 |
| _version_ | 1811260555537678336 |
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| author | Sue Anne Bell, MSN FNP-BC Victoria Bam, RN PhD Sarah Rominski, MPH Nee-Kofi Mould-Millman, MD Petra Brysiewicz, PhD RN |
| author_facet | Sue Anne Bell, MSN FNP-BC Victoria Bam, RN PhD Sarah Rominski, MPH Nee-Kofi Mould-Millman, MD Petra Brysiewicz, PhD RN |
| author_sort | Sue Anne Bell, MSN FNP-BC |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Background: Strengthening the provision of emergency health services, including the nursing workforce, is progress towards decreasing the burden of injury in sub-Saharan Africa. The WHO Essential Trauma Care Guidelines provide minimum knowledge and skills to ensure quality in-hospital trauma care. Our aim was to develop an emergency nursing trauma care knowledge, attitudes, and skills minimum competency assessment instrument with WHO guidelines for African emergency care settings.
Methods: Constructs anchoring the assessment were defined by an expert panel of six emergency nurses from Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania, with a modified Delphi approach. The panel did each phase of the knowledge, attitudes, and skills instrument creation and validation by: (1) identifying objectives and attributes; (2) narrowing the domain of content previously predefined by WHO; (3) developing survey questions; (4) reviewing questions in the instrument; and (5) pilot testing the survey with 23 emergency nurses in Ghana.
Findings: A four-part instrument was created. Important objectives and attributes of the instrument included easy measurement and discrimination of trauma care knowledge, attitudes, and skills among emergency nurses in sub-Saharan Africa. Domains assessed were primary, secondary, focused, and ongoing trauma assessment and management, including team-oriented practices, nursing analysis, planning, and implementation. The knowledge, attitudes, and skills instrument included ten demographic and 46 attitude questions self-administered on paper, 49 open-ended oral interview questions, and 26 administered in an observed patient simulation format. Pilot results show the instrument was easy to apply, appropriate for low-resource testing, and was able to discriminate knowledge, attitudes, and skills among nurses of various competencies.
Interpretation: In Ghana, the longitudinal assessment instrument should be implemented for cohorts of newly trained emergency nurses. In other sub-Saharan African countries, actively trained emergency nurses the instrument should be locally validated and piloted, then deployed to measure basic trauma competencies between nurses. Ultimately, the instrument should serve as a standard across sub-Saharan Africa for measurement of competency among nurses, thereby allowing multination comparisons or longitudinal assessments.
Funding: Fogarty International Center. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T18:49:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-948a8fbaf94744119560e9dea5f681ea |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2214-109X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T18:49:22Z |
| publishDate | 2014-05-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | The Lancet Global Health |
| spelling | doaj.art-948a8fbaf94744119560e9dea5f681ea2022-12-22T03:20:31ZengElsevierThe Lancet Global Health2214-109X2014-05-012S1S310.1016/S2214-109X(15)70025-2Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West AfricaSue Anne Bell, MSN FNP-BC0Victoria Bam, RN PhD1Sarah Rominski, MPH2Nee-Kofi Mould-Millman, MD3Petra Brysiewicz, PhD RN4Department of Emergency Medicine and School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USAKwame Nkrumah Unversity of Science and Technology, Kumasi, GhanaUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USAUniversity of Colorado, Aurora, CO, USAUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South AfricaBackground: Strengthening the provision of emergency health services, including the nursing workforce, is progress towards decreasing the burden of injury in sub-Saharan Africa. The WHO Essential Trauma Care Guidelines provide minimum knowledge and skills to ensure quality in-hospital trauma care. Our aim was to develop an emergency nursing trauma care knowledge, attitudes, and skills minimum competency assessment instrument with WHO guidelines for African emergency care settings. Methods: Constructs anchoring the assessment were defined by an expert panel of six emergency nurses from Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania, with a modified Delphi approach. The panel did each phase of the knowledge, attitudes, and skills instrument creation and validation by: (1) identifying objectives and attributes; (2) narrowing the domain of content previously predefined by WHO; (3) developing survey questions; (4) reviewing questions in the instrument; and (5) pilot testing the survey with 23 emergency nurses in Ghana. Findings: A four-part instrument was created. Important objectives and attributes of the instrument included easy measurement and discrimination of trauma care knowledge, attitudes, and skills among emergency nurses in sub-Saharan Africa. Domains assessed were primary, secondary, focused, and ongoing trauma assessment and management, including team-oriented practices, nursing analysis, planning, and implementation. The knowledge, attitudes, and skills instrument included ten demographic and 46 attitude questions self-administered on paper, 49 open-ended oral interview questions, and 26 administered in an observed patient simulation format. Pilot results show the instrument was easy to apply, appropriate for low-resource testing, and was able to discriminate knowledge, attitudes, and skills among nurses of various competencies. Interpretation: In Ghana, the longitudinal assessment instrument should be implemented for cohorts of newly trained emergency nurses. In other sub-Saharan African countries, actively trained emergency nurses the instrument should be locally validated and piloted, then deployed to measure basic trauma competencies between nurses. Ultimately, the instrument should serve as a standard across sub-Saharan Africa for measurement of competency among nurses, thereby allowing multination comparisons or longitudinal assessments. Funding: Fogarty International Center.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X15700252 |
| spellingShingle | Sue Anne Bell, MSN FNP-BC Victoria Bam, RN PhD Sarah Rominski, MPH Nee-Kofi Mould-Millman, MD Petra Brysiewicz, PhD RN Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa The Lancet Global Health |
| title | Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa |
| title_full | Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa |
| title_fullStr | Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa |
| title_full_unstemmed | Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa |
| title_short | Development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in West Africa |
| title_sort | development of a trauma care assessment instrument for emergency nurses in west africa |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X15700252 |
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