A Model For Incorporating Specialist Nurse Education Into A University Context

Bruce, J. & Klopper, H. C. (2010). A Model for Incorporating Specialist Nurse Education into a University Context. Part 1: Methodological Perspectives.Health SA Geosndheid 15(1):1-6.

Bruce & Klopper (2010) article is a review of possible ways to integrate specialist nursing education in colleges with university education. They acknowledge that with recent changes in the higher education sector following amendment of legislation regulating it the future of specialist nursing education in colleges is bleak. They argue that the current legislation does not considernursing colleges as part of the higher education and as such they see the need to incorporate them with institutions of higher learning. They argue that the transformation from college to university education in educating specialist nurses will bring some challenges. They for instance see a challenge, in terms of conflict in values espoused in traditional nursing, which they argue universities tend to contest. However, they also observe that there is need to have university education which brings an element of research, but in the same time develop ways to ensure that the traditions of this discipline are not jeopardized. Therefore, their paper was intended to ensure that in future as university takes over from college in nurses’ education, the element of specialist nurse education is incorporated into the new system. The paper sought to look at relevant concepts of this education in the context of a university institution and ways that these might be understood in order to develop an appropriate model for it integration. This particular paper describes methodology the authors used to develop their model of integration of specialist nurse education offered in colleges into the higher education sector, which is construed to mean university level.

The paper objectives were organized into two. In the first phase the authors looked at opinions of professional nurses with regard to specialist nurses in colleges as offered in the university. In the second phase the author focused on the model for integrating specialist education in university. Their study was developed based on a qualitative research model. They argued that this model was appropriate for the study because it was exploratory, contextual and descriptive. As such they assert that exploratory design of the study enabled them to collect the opinions of participants, mainly including practitioners and nurse educators, with regard to provision of specialist education in the university. This approach is mainly used for research of new phenomenon that has not been studied and because provision of courses offered in colleges at university had not been studied previously, the exploratory design was appropriate.

The study collected information through tools like focus groups, and as such the author argues that they need a descriptive study to record accurately information gathered. The contextual design limited the study to Gauteng province and within the bounders of specialist nurse education. Participants in the study were picked through purposeful sampling technique. Sampled nurse educators were organized into groups of 17 participants and nurse practitioners organized into groups of 13 participants and information collected through focus group technique. The data from the focus group was written and analyzed by being organized into themes to allow interpretations. Apart from focus group data was also gathered through individual interviews method.

The authors also describe how the second objective of model creation was attained. They arrange this into three phases of concept development, statement development and theory development. The authors used the concept synthesis strategy to develop concepts acquired through data collection. They then used the statement synthesis strategy to specify link between various concepts identified from the study. Lastly, in the theory development section, the authors used theory synthesis strategy to bring together the relational statements emerging from the statement development phase to create their proposed model for specialist nurse education. Therefore, in terms of the results, collected concepts from interviews were used to develop relational statements to pool information generated about university education in relation to practice of specialist nursing.  Because the authors used a qualitative research they describe various reasons why research could have been untrustworthy and what was done to enhance trustworthiness. For instance, to enhance research trustworthiness a peer review committee examined the credibility of the study. The questionnaire used in the interv.............

A Model For Incorporating Specialist Nurse Education Into A University Context

Bruce, J. & Klopper, H. C. (2010). A Model for Incorporating Specialist Nurse Education into a University Context. Part 1: Methodological Perspectives.Health SA Geosndheid 15(1):1-6.

Bruce & Klopper (2010) article is a review of possible ways to integrate specialist nursing education in colleges with university education. They acknowledge that with recent changes in the higher education sector following amendment of legislation regulating it the future of specialist nursing education in colleges is bleak. They argue that the current legislation does not considernursing colleges as part of the higher education and as such they see the need to incorporate them with institutions of higher learning. They argue that the transformation from college to university education in educating specialist nurses will bring some challenges. They for instance see a challenge, in terms of conflict in values espoused in traditional nursing, which they argue universities tend to contest. However, they also observe that there is need to have university education which brings an element of research, but in the same time develop ways to ensure that the traditions of this discipline are not jeopardized. Therefore, their paper was intended to ensure that in future as university takes over from college in nurses’ education, the element of specialist nurse education is incorporated into the new system. The paper sought to look at relevant concepts of this education in the context of a university institution and ways that these might be understood in order to develop an appropriate model for it integration. This particular paper describes methodology the authors used to develop their model of integration of specialist nurse education offered in colleges into the higher education sector, which is construed to mean university level.

The paper objectives were organized into two. In the first phase the authors looked at opinions of professional nurses with regard to specialist nurses in colleges as offered in the university. In the second phase the author focused on the model for integrating specialist education in university. Their study was developed based on a qualitative research model. They argued that this model was appropriate for the study because it was exploratory, contextual and descriptive. As such they assert that exploratory design of the study enabled them to collect the opinions of participants, mainly including practitioners and nurse educators, with regard to provision of specialist education in the university. This approach is mainly used for research of new phenomenon that has not been studied and because provision of courses offered in colleges at university had not been studied previously, the exploratory design was appropriate.

The study collected information through tools like focus groups, and as such the author argues that they need a descriptive study to record accurately information gathered. The contextual design limited the study to Gauteng province and within the bounders of specialist nurse education. Participants in the study were picked through purposeful sampling technique. Sampled nurse educators were organized into groups of 17 participants and nurse practitioners organized into groups of 13 participants and information collected through focus group technique. The data from the focus group was written and analyzed by being organized into themes to allow interpretations. Apart from focus group data was also gathered through individual interviews method.

The authors also describe how the second objective of model creation was attained. They arrange this into three phases of concept development, statement development and theory development. The authors used the concept synthesis strategy to develop concepts acquired through data collection. They then used the statement synthesis strategy to specify link between various concepts identified from the study. Lastly, in the theory development section, the authors used theory synthesis strategy to bring together the relational statements emerging from the statement development phase to create their proposed model for specialist nurse education. Therefore, in terms of the results, collected concepts from interviews were used to develop relational statements to pool information generated about university education in relation to practice of specialist nursing.  Because the authors used a qualitative research they describe various reasons why research could have been untrustworthy and what was done to enhance trustworthiness. For instance, to enhance research trustworthiness a peer review committee examined the credibility of the study. The questionnaire used in the interv.............