Clinical Practice Realities: World and African Perspectives

Abstract

Background: The nursing and midwifery workforce form the majority of many healthcare systems and make a substantial contribution to health service delivery in primary and acute care, and community settings. For this reason, in recent years, there has been a global call to put nursing and midwifery services development at the heart of government policy.

Description: Global provision of competent and skilled practitioners to meet these established targets has been identified as a drive to achieve these goals. Nursing and midwifery education, regulation in nursing and midwifery, and challenges in nursing and midwifery practice are explored. These are examined giving both world and African perspectives, especially in the Rwandan context.

Lessons Learned: For nursing and midwifery care to be pertinent, the needs of the global population and health services should play a major role in defining nursing and midwifery services. The challenges associated with the lack of human health resources, infrastructure, and equipment are common in many countries of the world and the shortage of nurses and midwives is acute in many countries in Africa.

Conclusion: Many of Africa’s nursing and midwifery education institutions are in a state of crisis with poor physical infrastructure, lack of human resource capacity, poor management systems, and problematic funding for resources. This is particularly true in subsaharan region.

Keywords: clinical practice, nursing, midwifery, Africa