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Theses and dissertations (Health Sciences)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://ir-dev.dut.ac.za/handle/10321/12

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    Assessment of vicarious post-traumatic stress in nurses caring for victims of sexual abuse in Thuthuzela Care Centres in KwaZulu-Natal
    (2024) Hlomuka, Nonhlanhla; Orton, Penelope Margaret
    The aim of this study was to determine whether nurses working in Thuthuzela Care Centres experience vicarious post-traumatic stress. Thuthuzela is a Xhosa word which means comfort. The word comfort awakens feelings of warmth, freedom from emotional and physical concerns, safety, security, being pampered and above all reinforcing dignity, hope and positive expectations for the victims Thuthuzela Care Centres are one stop facilities that have been introduced as a critical part of South Africa’s anti –rape strategy. There have been a number of studies exploring vicarious post-traumatic stress for health care workers other than nurses caring for victims’ sexual abuse but little is known about the risk for nurses. A non-experimental descriptive survey design was used to assess vicarious post-traumatic stress of nurses caring for victims of sexual abuse who report to the Thuthuzela Care Centres in KwaZulu Natal. 6.Data was collected in this quantitative study through the administration of a questionnaire. The professional quality of life (ProQol) questionnaire was used to answer the research questions. In this study a convenience method of sampling was used. A convenience sampling is referred to as availability sampling and it involves the choice of readily available respondents for the study. The sample included all nurses working in Thuthuzela Care Centres irrespective of their category following repeated exposure and listening to different scenarios while executing their duty of caring for victims of sexual abuse in KwaZulu Natal. 10. The sample size was 31 nurses working in Thuthuzela Care Centres. The data collection instrument of this study measured all the aspects included in vicarious post-traumatic stress, secondary traumatic stress, compassion satisfaction and burnout. All of these being in line with the objectives of the study. Factor analysis with Promax rotation was applied to the 30 items measuring the three constructs (compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress) in order to elicit the latent structure that applies to the current study. The KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) measure of sampling adequacy yielded a relatively low value of .521 which was likely due to the limited sample size. It is, however, considered by some to be adequate and indicates adequacy of the data. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant thus indicating that the variables are related and therefore suitable for factor analysis. Rotation converged in 5 iterations. The reliability of compassion satisfaction and secondary traumatic stress are shown to be adequate. Cronbach’s alpha of .567 for burnout indicates that results need to be interpreted with a little caution Data was analysed using SPSS version 17. The data derived from this study revealed that a little over half of respondents 54.8% (n=17) working in Thuthuzela Care Centres are very often happy about nursing victims of sexual abuse. Less than a half 38.7% (n = 12), of respondents indicated that they are not productive at work because they are losing sleep related to traumatic experiences of the people they nurse. Less than a half of the respondents 45.2% (n=14) reported that they sometimes, have intrusive, and/or frightening thoughts related to caring for victims of sexual abuse. (p<.005). In this study the respondents were protected from any harm by a full explanation about the aim of the study, their rights to voluntarily participate and their freedom to withdraw from the study at any time during the study. This study attended the ethical principle related to right to fair treatment because ethical approval was sought from and granted by DUT Institutional Research Ethics Committee to the researcher before the research was commenced. In this study, the participants were not required to give their personal details to the researchers. The researcher used numbers to identify questionnaire distributed to the respondents. Recommendations Recommendations arising from this study are 22. (a) a mandatory programme of psychological intervention for the nurses is necessary. 23. (b) a psychologist should be readily available at the Thuthuzela Care Centres for counselling sessions, and 24. (c) all health districts should have Thuthuzela Care Centres. 25.Wellbeing of the nurses allocated to work in Thuthuzela Care Centres should be considered. Conclusion 26.Findings from this data can be used to strengthen awareness programs and emphasize self-care techniques to minimize vicarious trauma in nurses caring for victims of sexual abuse in Thuthuzela Care Centres. 27.Consistent training and ongoing discussions about signs of vicarious trauma are important for nurses and other health professionals caring for victims of sexual abuse
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    Guidelines to enhance the human caring attributes amongst the undergraduate nursing students and nurse graduates in KwaZulu-Natal
    (2020-06-10) Zikalala, Nomusa Penicca; Sibiya, M. N.; Jinabhai, C. C.
    The nursing profession needs caring individuals. Graduating nurses who interrelate with others in an empathetic and compassionate manner is obligatory for nursing to uphold the image of being a caring profession. Not only nursing’s reputation is at stake, but also having caring or uncaring nurses does have financial bearing in healthcare. South Africa is witnessing a sharp increase in medical malpractice litigation as patients increasingly become aware of their rights in a setting of an overburdened health system with limited resources. The consequences of increased litigation are a further reduction in the state’s ability to finance health care because of large pay-outs and a continuing increase in malpractice premiums in the private sector. Aim The aim of this study was to critically analyse the role played by theoretical and clinical learning experiences, in influencing the development of human caring attributes among undergraduate nursing students and newly graduated professional nurses (less than five years of experience) in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in order to establish clear guidelines that could be used by lecturers to enhance human caring attributes among the nursing students. Methodology The convergent mixed method design (Qualitative + Quantitative) was used in the current study. This method allowed the researcher to use concurrent timing to implement the qualitative and quantitative strands during the same research process, prioritise both methods equally, but kept the strands independent and only mixed the quantitative and qualitative results during the overall interpretation. The quantitative aspect enabled the researcher to gather information from undergraduate nursing students and newly graduated professional nurses (less than five years of experience) from both selected KZN College of Nursing (KZNCN) and University of Technology (UoT) using the Caring Behaviour Inventory Tool after the researcher received permission from the author. The qualitative aspect allowed the researcher to gather information from the newly graduated professional nurses (less than five years of experience) and nursing students’ from KZNCN and UoT, understanding of the concept human caring, to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic factors related to the development of human caring attributes from their perspectives and to determine their experiences in both the theory and the clinical setting that contributed to the development of human caring attributes through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Focus group discussions with nurse educators from the selected KZNCN and UoT as well as nurse managers and nursing students from DUT and KZNCN practice, also enabled the researcher to gather some rich information from these participants. The quantitative data was analysed using version 25.0 of the Statistical Package of Social Sciences and the qualitative data was analysed using Tech’s method of data analysis. Findings The quantitative data showed that the nursing students and newly graduated professional nurses had a clear idea regarding the constituents of caring in nursing. The findings identified a caring nurse as being giving the patient information, so that he/ she can make a decision, supporting the patient, giving good physical care, giving instructions or teaching the patients, treating patient information confidentially, making the patient physically or emotional comfortable, helping to reduce the patients’ pain, encouraging the patient to call if there are problems, showing respect for the patient and giving good physical care. The qualitative findings of the current study revealed that there was a unanimous agreement amongst the nurses irrespective of their professional ranks about the understanding of the concept human caring. These findings also revealed that the lack of human and material resources, unconducive working environment and lack of management support impact negatively on the quality of patient care as well as nursing students’ integration of theory into practice. The researcher also established clear guidelines that can be used by lecturers to enhance human caring attributes among the nursing students. Recommendations for implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness of the developed guidelines were suggested for future research.