The landscape of perioperative nursing education in Africa: a scoping review

TL;DR

This paper reviews the state of perioperative nursing education in Africa, highlighting the lack of formal training programs and the need for more research to improve surgical care outcomes.

Contribution

The paper provides a scoping review of perioperative nursing education in Africa, identifying gaps and the need for more structured training programs.

Findings

Few specialized perioperative nursing education programs exist across Africa.

Evaluated programs have shown improvements in nurses' knowledge and clinical skills.

More research is needed to support the development of effective educational initiatives.

Abstract

Not everyone across the globe has access to safe surgical care. There exist stark disparities in surgical mortality between high-income and low-and middle-income countries. Quality perioperative care across the surgical care continuum can mitigate these disparities. Nurses play a vital role in providing quality perioperative care and their competency in perioperative nursing directly impacts surgical outcomes. Across Africa, formal educational opportunities for nurses in perioperative care is not well understood.

This is an informal scoping review of the existing literature investigating the current state of perioperative nursing education across the African continent. Ten articles were included in the analysis.

Few programs exist across Africa that provide specialized training for nurses in perioperative medicine. Programs that have been formally evaluated show improved knowledge and clinical skills among nurses.

Greater research is necessary to establish a more robust evidence base in support of increasing access to perioperative nursing education to improve patient outcomes. Obstacles remain to designing, implementing, and evaluating new educational programs.