Soft skills the matchless traits and skills in nursing practice: An integrative review

Background & Aim: While hard skills refer to the technical ability and factual knowledge needed to do a job, soft skills allow you to use your technical abilities and knowledge more effectively. These two skills are complementary, but soft skills are prerequisites in every profession where human interaction and teamwork are needed to succeed. This integrative review examined the research on soft skills in nursing and made recommendations based on its findings. Methods & Materials: Whittemore and Knafl’s five-step integrative review framework was carried out using four electronic databases. These databases are the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, Medline on EBSCOhost, and Scopus. Searches were conducted using keywords: soft skills, non-technical skills, nursing skills, nursing art, and aesthetics. The literature search explored no date ranges, and only the English language was considered. Full texts of relevant studies in both qualitative and quantitative research were retrieved. Critical appraisal was undertaken, and the findings of the relevant studies were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Seventeen studies were included, and the findings suggest an urgent need for soft skills in the nursing domain. Five themes emerged: the meaning of soft skills in nursing, the benefits of soft skills in nursing; the need for soft skills in nursing; the incorporation of soft skills into nursing practice; and the relationship between hard and soft skills. Findings show soft skills are the cognitive and social capabilities that complete the technical skills of the nurse. Conclusion: Incorporating soft skills into the nursing curriculum should be a resuscitative call that requires immediate attention.

Relation Between Religious Perspectives and Views on Sickle Cell Disease Research and Associated Public Health Interventions in Ghana

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is highly prevalent in Africa with a significant public health burden for under-resourced countries. We employed qualitative research methods to understand the ethical, legal, and social implications of conducting genomic research in SCD under the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) initiative. The present study focused on religious and cultural aspects of SCD with the view to identifying beliefs and attitudes relevant to public health interventions in Ghana. Thematic analyses from individual and group interviews revealed six key areas of importance, namely, reliance on a supreme being; religion as a disruptive influence on health behaviors; role of religious leaders in information sharing and decision-making; social, religious, and customary norms; health and religious/supernatural beliefs; and need for social education and support through church and community. Findings suggest that public health programs in Ghana should not only aim at increasing knowledge and awareness about SCD and its management but also create an understanding of the relevance of genomics and alternative technological advancement to diagnosis and ethical decision-making around available options for health seeking. Future research should engage communities to help address the ethical and social implications of a persuasive religious influence on SCD-related health decisions.

Ghanaian nurses' knowledge of invasive procedural pain and its effect on children, parents and nurses

AIM

To explore Ghanaian nurses' knowledge of invasive procedural pain in children who are in hospital and to identify the effect of unrelieved pain on children, parents and nurses.

METHOD

An exploratory, descriptive and qualitative design was adopted. A purposive sampling technique was used and individual face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 registered nurses from four children's units at a hospital in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Thematic and content analyses were performed.

FINDINGS

Four themes emerged: types of invasive procedure; pain expression; pain assessment; and effects of unrelieved pain. Participants had adequate knowledge of painful invasive procedures, however, they were not aware of the range of available validated pain assessment tools, using observations and body language instead to assess pain.

CONCLUSION

Ghanaian nurses require education on the use of validated rating scales to assess procedural pain in children. The inclusion of pain assessment and management in pre-registration curricula could improve knowledge.