Nursing Practice, Working Environment, and Educational Needs of Nurses in Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Title: Nursing practice, working environment, and educational needs of nurses in Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Purpose:

The purposes of this qualitative study were 1) to describe the nurses’ experiences in daily nursing practice at the clinical setting, 2) to describe the nurses’ perspectives on their clinical practice as a nursing profession, and 3) to explore the demand of educational supports for nurses to develop their own career as a nurse and to provide better care for the patients.

Methods:

A convenient sample of 36 nurses who have more than three years of nursing experiences was recruited from three general hospitals in Socialist Republic of Vietnam. A semi-structured small group interview with open-end question method was used to collected data. The questions were 1) how is your daily nursing practice and any difficulty or problems that you concerns; 2) how would you like to obtain any skills or you wish to improve something about yourself; and 3) what would you request any learning opportunities or learning subjects for future. The set of data from interviews was analyzed through coding and categorization.

Findings:

The nurses’ experienced difficulties in daily nursing practice were characterized by 1) insufficient medical supply, materials or equipment that necessary for pressed patients care and treatment, 2) imbalanced between patients care demand and nurse staffing ratio which caused by the exceeding number of patients admitted to the hospital, 3) the gap between nursing skills implementing  everyday nursing practice and being learned at nursing school, 4) required many nursing documents and other tasks, and 5) insufficient advocacy as one of the health care provider for clams or any clinical problem. Additional abilities that the nurses need to be acquired were 1) communication skills as a health care provider, especially to deal with the difficult patents and family and 2) disease specific knowledge and skills that fit with patients in their ward. The nurses wished to have more frequent opportunities of in-hospital training to learn communication skills especially for health care provider to deal with difficult relationship between nurses-patients and patients’ family and the skills training that providing completely prepared or in condition for immediate action or use in their daily nursing practice. The nurses hoped to have opportunities to expose themselves to different health care institution both in Vietnam and foreign countries in order to observe and compare nursing working environment, nurse’s scope of practice, and the relationships between patients and nurse, and nursing research.

Conclusion:

 The finding identified specific nurses’ experiences and difficulties in daily nursing practice. Nursing in-hospital training demands were specified. The nurses wished to have training that providing completely prepared to use in some specific condition for immediate action, which implied nurses requested more practical and immediately usable “how-to” information instead of core universal knowledge or skills. In addition, nurses wished to have opportunities to expose different health care systems or environment such as outside of hospitals or countries.

Clinical relevance:

Nursing practice, working environment in Socialist Republic of Vietnam is developing and progressing. It is crucial to support not only to meet their educational demand but also further follow up to improve the nurses work environment as well.