Challenges experienced by nurse educators on the delivery of content laden curriculum at a nursing college in Gauteng

Abstract

Objective: Nursing education is characterised by content laden curriculum which results in superficial coverage of content by most nurse educators in order to get the curriculum finished. The aim of this study was to explore and describe the challenges experienced by nurse educators on the delivery of content laden curriculum at a nursing college in Gauteng.

Methods: A purposive sampling was used to select 20 nurse educators who teach a four-year comprehensive nursing diploma at a nursing college in Gauteng. The data were collected through audio-taped, in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews until data saturation was reached. The study was enriched with field notes that were taken to increase the credibility of data collected. Data were analysed by the researcher and an independent coder using Tesch’s protocol of qualitative data analysis. Trustworthiness was ensured through the use of Lincoln and Guba’s four principles.

Results: The findings revealed that the challenges experienced by nurse educators during delivery of content laden curriculum were large classes, academically underprepared learner nurses, lack of learner nurses’ prior knowledge and learner nurses’ negative attitude towards nursing. Following these findings, the implications of the results were discussed and recommendations were made that can be used to facilitate effective delivery of the content laden curriculum.

Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that the need to cover the learning content should not supersede effective teaching and meaningful learning for the development of higher-order thinking skills in learner nurses.