Quality improvement in emergency service delivery: Assessment of knowledge and skills amongst emergency nurses at Connaught Hospital, Sierra Leone

IntroductionThe ability to deliver quality emergency care services is reliant on a well-trained workforce. Since Sierra Leone was declared Ebola free in December 2015, the country has now moved into the post-Ebola reconstructive phase focusing on specialty training of healthcare workers. This development aligns well to the growing momentum for improved emergency medicine as a speciality in other regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. The first stage in assessing how to develop an emergency nursing speciality in Sierra Leone is to conduct an assessment of what is needed in terms of educational interventions. Concurrently enhancing emergency nursing capacity requires a comprehensive understanding of the role, function and emergency nurse educational requirements. This study was conducted to fully understand the current context, elucidate current nursing functions and gain knowledge of the educational desires and needs of nurses in the emergency centre at Connaught Hospital, the largest referral hospital in Sierra Leone.MethodsThis mixed-methods study comprised self-assessment, one multiple-choice questionnaire, focus group interviews and observational methods.ResultsEmergency nurses scored relatively low on the multiple-choice questionnaire, indicating through the self-assessment that they aspired to learn more about several topics within emergency care, and identified several themes which were considered to be barriers to delivery of care through focus group discussions and observations in the emergency centre.ConclusionThis study has identified key aspects of emergency nursing speciality training to be developed through theoretical and skill-based education provided by the nursing schools and hospital clinical facilities in Sierra Leone.