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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Med.
Sec. Intensive Care Medicine and Anesthesiology
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1432262
This article is part of the Research Topic Global Perioperative Care in Africa View all 6 articles

The Landscape of Perioperative Nursing Education in Africa: A Scoping Review

Provisionally accepted
Maddie Wong Maddie Wong 1Zione Banda Zione Banda 2Josephine Nabulime Josephine Nabulime 3Nira Matunda Nira Matunda 4Edina Matunda Edina Matunda 2Rebecca Silvers Rebecca Silvers 1*
  • 1 University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
  • 2 Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi
  • 3 Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda
  • 4 Muhimbili National Hospital, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: 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 are not well understood. Methods: 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. Results: 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. Conclusions: 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.

    Keywords: perioperative1, surgery2, nursing3, Education4, Africa5

    Received: 13 May 2024; Accepted: 28 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wong, Banda, Nabulime, Matunda, Matunda and Silvers. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Rebecca Silvers, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.