A continuing education programme for registered nurses working at mine medical stations

Abstract

Continuing education is necessary if the registered nurse wants to remain professionally competent, and up-to-date regarding theory and clinical skills development. This fact is ably demonstrated in the available literature. The need for a specific continuing education programme for registered nurses working in the mine medical stations of the gold mining industry,- was identified at a meeting of senior medical station superintendents of the Freegold Mines, a subsidiary of the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa. The fact that no such programme existed was identified as the main problem, and this served as the motivation for this study. Continuing education can be very costly. The development of such a programme therefore warrants careful planning in order to ensure that the end product (the curriculum) will be of such a nature that the student, the health care service and the health care consumer will benefit from it. The researcher therefore conducted a situational analysis at the mine medical stations of the Freegold mines in Welkom, and the Gold Fields of South Africa Limited mines in Carletonville. This was done to determine the exact learning needs of the registered nurses in the mine medical stations; the types of services offered at the medical stations; the needs of the health care consumers ( mine workers) , based on the monthly reports of the conditions that treatment was provided for; and the ability of the Gold Fields Nursing College and Ernest Oppenheimer Nursing College to present and maintain the continuing education programme. From the analysis of the collected data, it became clear that the

need expressed by the senior medical station superintendents was indeed a need experienced by all the registered nurses in the mine medical stations. Problems encountered in the health care services- in the mine medical stations were identified, and the exact learning needs of the registered nurses were established. Based on these findings, a curriculum for continuing education was developed, including the main nursing disciplines as identified during the situational analysis. In the mine medical stations, a unique health care service is rendered, with occupational health nursing as the main focus. Primary health care and primary health nursing science (including the physical assessment and relevant pharmacology), traumatology and ethos and professional practice of nursing also form important components of the curriculum. The analysis of the nursing colleges revealed that the Gold Fields Nursing College would experience difficulties in trying to offer such a continuing education programme at the present time, due to the staffing position, diversity of subjects presented by the teaching staff and possible staffing shortages. The Ernest Oppenheimer Nursing College is in the process of discontinuing their nursing education programme, and would therefore not be in a position to present the programme. The curriculum will now be handed to the Department of Nursing at the PU for CHE, who will make it available to teaching institutions that will be in a position to present the programme.