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Background:  Clinical training is important because it constitutes more than half of the formal courses in nursing education. Accordingly, it is important for institutions of higher learning to continually explore the experiences of nursing students during their clinical placement. These experiences can be used to promote a positive clinical learning environment for students. However, the experiences of nursing students during their mental health clinical training in Namibia have not been extensively researched.

Objectives:  The aim of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of nursing students during their mental health clinical training at a general hospital in Namibia.

Method:  A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design was followed as the basis for conducting the study. A sample of 15 nursing students was conveniently selected from the target population of 73 nursing students. This sample size was determined by the saturation of data as reflected in repeating themes.

Results:  The following three themes emerged: collating theory and mental health practice experiences, facing challenges in clinical placements, and recommendations to ensure effective learning about mental health.

Conclusion:  The use of a general hospital for clinical placements within an undergraduate nurse training course led to some concerns regarding the relevance and appropriateness of such experience within a nursing programme.Contribution: The findings have important implications for the training of undergraduate nursing students in general hospitals. It can be utilised to develop strategies to improve positive clinical practice placement and develop clinical skills for undergraduate nursing students in general hospitals.

Background:  The South African government has developed many policies for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases. However, non-communicable diseases remain among the major causes of morbidity and mortality in South Africa. Although these diseases are linked to interaction of multiple risk factors, many of which are modifiable, they continue to cause much suffering particularly among the marginalised and people from the lower socio-economic status.

Objectives:  The objective of this research was to explore and present the inclusion of social determinants of health in the policies meant for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases in South Africa.

Method:  The qualitative document analysis approach was used to conduct policy analysis of purposefully selected policies for prevention and control of cancers, obesity and mental and behavioural disorders in South Africa.

Results:  The analysis revealed that policies for prevention and control of cancers, obesity and mental and behavioural disorders included policy intervention activities that focused on five social determinants of health: (1) governance, (2) social policies, (3) public policies, (4) material circumstances and (5) health system.

Conclusion:  Excluding most of the important social determinants of health in the policies for prevention and control of non-communicable diseases means that these policies would continue to fail in preventing these diseases from the root causes.Contribution: This article points out weaknesses in the policies meant for prevention and control of obesity, cancers and mental and behavioural disorders. This article further suggests policy improvement strategies that may be considered to effectively address these diseases.

Background:  Midwifery is the backbone of women and child healthcare. The shortage of staff in maternity units is a crisis faced by many countries worldwide, including South Africa.

Objectives:  This study aims to explore the perceptions of midwives on the shortage and retention of staff at a public institution.

Method:  The study was conducted at one of the tertiary hospitals in Tshwane District, Gauteng Province. A total of 11 midwives were interviewed through face-to-face and focus group interviews. An explorative, descriptive generic qualitative design method was followed, and a non-probability, purposive sampling technique was used. Thematic coding analysis was followed for analysing data.

Results:  The impact of shortage of midwives was reported to be directly related to poor provision of quality care as a result of increased workload, leading to low morale and burnout. The compromised autonomy of midwives in the high obstetrics dependency units devalues the status of midwives.

Conclusion:  Midwives are passionate about their job, despite the hurdles related to their day-to-day work environment. They are demoralised by chronic shortage of staff and feel overworked. Staff involvement in decision-making processes is a motivational factor for midwives to stay in the profession. The midwives need to be in the centre of the decision-making processes related to their profession. The revision of the scope of practice and classification of midwifery profession away from general nursing complex by the South African Nursing Council (SANC) could place midwifery in its rightful status.

Background: Staff turnover of professional nurses remains a concern for public and private hospitals management because it has an impact on the morale of nurses and it may also lead to poor patient care.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to explore and describe the experiences of nursing unit managers with regard to the turnover of professional nurses who were under their supervision.

Method: A qualitative, explorative, descriptive research design was used to determine the experiences of nursing unit managers related to the turnover of professional nurses. Data collection was done by using semi-structured one-to-one interviews with professional nurses .Two groups of participants were interviewed: Those working day duty (n = 9) and those working night duty (n = 3) who were at work on the anticipated days for data collection.

Results: The findings revealed that every unit was experiencing a shortage of professional nurses, which caused other nurses to work overtime with an inevitable increase in workload. That led to tiredness, conflict amongst professional nurses, job dissatisfaction, and absenteeism which compromised nursing care. This resulted in patient dissatisfaction and sometimes led to deaths that could have been prevented.

Conclusion: It is recommended that staff turnover should be addressed by the hospital top management implementing several strategies. For example, top management could ensure that staff members work in a healthy environment with resources that they need during the provision of care, address the effects of the staff turnover, support the staff members and refrain from putting pressure on nursing unit managers whilst they are attending to problems.

Background: In order for nursing education to prepare nurses for holistic patient care, it is critical that educators become more aware of the religious and spiritual dimensions in patient care and be able to provide adequate knowledge and skills for nurses to offer spiritually-based care in an ethical way. Furthermore, spiritual care is an essential component in the nursing context, as nurses have to care for patients who may often turn to the spiritual dimension to cope and heal. These aspects are important issues to be considered in planning what should be taught as part of spiritual care.

Objectives: This paper presents findings from a study on nursing practitioners' views on the role of spiritual care in nursing practice and whether current nursing education has integrated this dimension into teaching.

Method: A descriptive survey using a cross-sectional design with 385 nurses was conducted between December 2012 and February 2013. Participants were recruited through multistage random sampling. Data analysis was undertaken using SSPS 0.20.

Results: All the participants (n = 385) concurred that spiritual care was a salient component of holistic patient care. They however stated that the primary barriers to providing spiritual care related to uncertainty on how to provide this type of care, and a lack of educational preparedness for this role.

Conclusion: The study found that nurses were very accepting of the need for spiritual care as part of their nursing role but that nursing education had not paid adequate attention to integrating this dimension into the nursing curriculum.

Background: South African nursing environments are marked by various incapacitating stressors. This study explores work-family (W-F) and family-work (F-W) conflicts as aspects of stress amongst nurses working with patients who have AIDS.

Objectives: The study sought to determine the value of W-F and F-W conflicts as predictors of work and family satisfaction, as well as turnover intentions and the moderating role of supervisor and significant other support, amongst nurses caring for patients with AIDS in public hospitals within the Capricorn and Mopani districts, Limpopo Province.

Methods: The study used a cross-sectional design, with data collected at one point only. Ninety-one nursing staff provided the data for the study by completing structured, self-administered surveys. Analysis involved computing correlations of all study variables. Thereafter, associated variables were used as predictors. In each predictive analysis, the nurses' stress served as a control variable, W-F and F-W conflicts were the independent variables and significant others and supervisor supports were moderators. Interaction terms were derived from independent and moderator variables.

Results: Although the findings of the study were not generally supportive of the hypotheses advanced, they nevertheless showed, amongst other findings, that F-W conflict predicted work satisfaction whilst W-F conflict predicted turnover intentions. Moreover, significant other support had a direct effect on family satisfaction whilst supervisor support moderated reports of W-F conflict and experiences of work satisfaction.

Conclusions: The study showed that inter-role models that appear to be established in the context of developed societies require some further investigations in South Africa.

Background: Proverbs and idioms represent cultural and societal beliefs and values inherited from the forefathers. An example is lebitla la mosadi ke bogadi. Over many decades African people have used such ancient instructions to counsel women to be resilient in their marriages thus impacting on their mental health.

Objective: The purpose of this article was to explore and describe that proverb and its impact on women's mental health.

Method: Hermeneutic phenomenology was used to explore and describe the prover band its impact on indigenous women's mental health. The population included married, divorced, widowed and single women who were attending social clubs or networks in the cities of Tshwane and Johannesburg. Snowball and purposive sampling was used to select 57 participants. Five face-to-face interviews and eight focus groups interviews were conducted. Colaizzi's data analysis method was used to analyse data.

Results: Oppression and stigmatisation of women and their families and harmful effects that may result in death were identified as having an impact on women's mental health. Some women shared that they were oppressed in many ways. In addition, they feared stigmatisation should they wish to divorce. They constantly lived in fear of being harmed or killed by their spouses.

Conclusion: There was a need for nurses to develop awareness regarding cultural issues so that women are better served in primary healthcare settings. Women who are suspected of experiencing abuse, should be screened for abuse so that they can be assisted accordingly.

Background: Service-learning (SL) is a contested field of knowledge and issues of sustainability and scholarship have been raised about it. The South African Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) has provided policy documents to guide higher education institutions (HEIs) in the facilitation of SL institutionalisation in their academic programmes. An implementation framework was therefore needed to institutionalise the necessary epistemological shifts advocated in the national SL policy guidelines.

Objectives: This article is based on the findings of a doctoral thesis that aimed at developing an SL implementation framework for the School of Nursing (SoN) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC).

Method: Mixed methods were used during the first four phases of the design and developmenti ntervention research model developed by Rothman and Thomas.

Results: The SL implementation framework that was developed during Phase 3 specified the intervention elements to address the gaps that had been identified by the core findings of Phases 1 and 2. Four intervention elements were specified for the SL implementation framework. The first intervention element focused on the assessment of readiness for SL institutionalisation. The development of SL capacity and SL scholarship was regarded as the pivotal intervention element for three of the elements: the development of a contextual SL definition, an SL pedagogical model, and a monitoring and evaluation system for SL institutionalisation.

Conclusion: The SL implementation framework satisfies the goals of SL institutionalisation, namely to develop a common language and a set of principles to guide practice, and to ensure the allocation of resources in order to facilitate the SL teaching methodology.The contextualised SL definition that was formulated for the SoN contributes to the SL operationalisation discourse at the HEI.