Professional expectations of middle level and superior level nursing students – evidence from two sub-Saharan African countries

• Autor(a) principal: Fronteira, Inês
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Seca, Aida, Menezes, Anastácio, Velez Lapão, Luís, Ferrinho, Paulo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.25761/anaisihmt.172

Background In the last decade, in some of the Portuguese Speaking African Countries, a nursing degree with four years of training (graduate/university- -level) has been created along with the pre-existing middle level /diploma training (3 years). There is no evidence on what university level students course expect of their professional life and if their expectations differ from middle-level nursing students. Nevertheless, when professional expectations are not met, professionals might get dissatisfied and unmotivated which, ultimately, will influence the quality of care they provide. Aims To identify and compare the expectations of middle level and university level nursing students towards professional life. Material and methods Multicentric cross sectional study, conducted in two nursing schools in Guinea Bissau and one nursing school in Sao Tome and Principe in 2010/2011 school year. The population of the study comprised all last year students from selected schools. We used a close ended questionnaire previously used in similar studies to collect data. We used SPSS v.20 Leiden’s School optimal scaling multiple correspondence analysis to identify groups of students that shared common socio-demographic characteristics and expectations towards professional life Results Middle level nursing students did not differ significantly from university level nursing students in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, despite the country of origin. University level nursing students expected to work in both the private and the public setor (dual practice), in the central administration of the health system and to earn more than 200 euros per month. Middle level students from Sao Tome and Principe and from Guinea Bissau, expected to work in the public setor, at the hospital level and to earn 200 or less euros. Discussion The skilling up of the training of nurses cannot be dissociated from the expectations of newly graduate and the capacity of the health system to address those expectations. If not part of a broader human resources for health policy, the isolated skilling-up of nursing training can lead to unsatisfied and demotivated nurses who ultimately will deliver poor quality services, leave their job and/or migrate.