AORTIC 2011, Cairo, Egypt 30 November–2 December 2011

Training needs for African nurses

Petra Fordelmann – Creative Wellness, Heidelberg, South Africa

We were mostly focussing on the training needs in Africa and the challenges and the opportunities. We were also talking a little bit about psychosocial issues and communication amongst cancer and cancer patients, cancer staff.

What are some of the challenges that nurses face in Africa?

Referring to the psychosocial issues, I think that the specific challenges with psychosocial issues in Africa is the fact that facilities are under-staffed so there’s a high load of patients, very little staff, so psychosocial issues are not really spoken about. The session today was really putting an emphasis on the importance of working out structures so that patients can actually have the opportunity of psychosocial support, which at the moment isn’t really happening at all.

How do nurses handle the psychosocial challenges?

We were talking about training issues, getting onto the training of nurses specifically, because often nurses are really the people that can offer the psychosocial support because they mostly have contact with patients. So we were discussing a few strategies in terms of training. We were discussing, specifically, short courses amongst nursing staff; we were talking about a higher level of perhaps more strategized and more specific training and then we were also talking about postgraduate training for nurses. Postgraduate training not necessarily focussing on psychosocial oncology as such, but being a more comprehensive training pertaining to all the issues that oncology nurses or cancer nurses in Africa need to know.

Are there any issues surrounding the training?

Funding is really the issue around all the training. There are facilities, there are resources willing to assists so funding, at the moment, is really the issue. There are a few options that we are exploring at the moment but nothing definite yet.