Original Research
Perceptions of registered nurses in four state health insititutions on continuing formal education
Submitted: 28 September 2010 | Published: 28 September 2010
About the author(s)
L. Richards, University of the Western Cape, South AfricaE. Potgieter, Department of Health Studies, Unisa, South Africa
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PDF (412KB)Abstract
- registered nurses’ views on continuing formal
- education registered nurses’ perceived barriers to continuing formal education
A quantitative descriptive survey design was chosen using a questionnaire for data collection. The sample consisted of 40 registered nurses working at four state health institutions in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Convenience sampling was selected to include registered nurses who were on duty on the days during which there searcher visited the health institutions to distribute the questionnaires. The questionnaire contained mainly closed-ended and a few open-ended questions. Content validity of the instrument was ensured by doing a thorough literature review before construction of items and a pretest. Reliability was established by the pretest and providing the same information to all respondents before completion of the questionnaires.The ethical considerations of informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality were adhered to and consent to conduct the study was obtained from relevant authorities. Descriptive statistics, based on calculations using the Microsoft (MS)Excel (for Windows 2000) programme, were used to summarise and describe the research results. The research results indicated that most registered nurses perceive continuing formal education as beneficial to their personal and professional growth and that it could lead towards improving the quality of patient/client care, but barrier sexist which prevent or deter them from undertaking continuing formal education programmes. The main structural barriers included lack of funding and lack of coherent staff development planning and physical barriers including job and family responsibilities.
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