No abstract

Background: In Tanzania, the competency based curriculum was introduced in 2008. Despite the government efforts to ensure its effective implementation, there has been a public concern on graduate nurse's and midwives' competencies in providing quality nursing care in the country. This concern has influenced people to question the process of the implementation of competency based curriculum for nursing and midwifery programmes. This study describes experience of the nurse educators in implementing the competency based curriculum for nursing and midwifery programmes in Tanzania.Methods: Convergent parallel mixed method approach was used to explore the experience of nurse educators implementing competency based curriculum. To enhance the validity of the findings, 240 nurse educators, out of 264, answered a questionnaire while the remaining 24 were interviewed. Further, a retrospective observation was done to triangulate the information obtained from the questionnaire and interviews. Results: The study found out that nurse educators struggle implementing the competency based curriculum and 92% of the participants could not clearly explain the concept of the approach itself. 234 of them used lecture discussion (97%) while simulation was used by 128 (53%). Challenges associated with employing participatory teaching and learning methods reported by most participants included time constraints (61; 25%), some method require special skills to teach(33; 13% and tutors needed training on the competency based curriculum to implement it (13; 5%).Conclusion: The results conclude that an understanding of the competency based curriculum is limited among educators. Furthermore, they revealed challenges in employing the participatory teaching and learning methods, hence, underscoring the need to put in place a sustainable strategy for continuous personal development and mentorship. Keywords: Competency based curriculum, implementation fidelity, nurse educators' experience, nursing and midwifery training programmes.

Background: In Tanzania, the competency-based curriculum was introduced in 2008. Despite the government’s efforts to ensure its effective implementation, there has been a public concern on graduate nurses’ and midwives’ competencies in providing quality nursing care in the country. This concern has influenced people to question the process of the implementation of competency-based curriculum for nursing and midwifery programmes. This study describes experiences of the nurse educators in implementing the competency-based curriculum for nursing and midwifery programmes in Tanzania. Methods: Cross section study design using convergent parallel mixed methods approach was used to describe the experience of nurse educators implementing competency-based curriculum. To enhance the validity of the findings, 240 nurse educators, out of 264, answered a questionnaire while the remaining 24 were interviewed. Results: The study found out that nurse educators had difficulties implementing the competency-based curriculum. Nighty-seven percent of participants used lecture discussions, 53% simulation and were not using participatory methods of teaching and learning because of time constraints (25%) and lack of special skills (13%). Qualitative findings revealed inability of the participants to understand concepts and interpret the competency based curriculum. Conclusion: The Nursing and Midwifery CBET curriculum was not implemented as it was intended. Nurse educators lacked understanding of the competency-based curriculum. Further, they reported that they were unable to apply various participatory methods of teaching and learning because of lack of time, equipment and larger number of students. There is need to put in place sustainable strategies for continuous professional development, provision of adequate teaching and learning resources and mentorship. Keywords: Competency-based curriculum, nurse educators’ experience, nursing and midwifery training programmes.

Background: Competency Based Education and Training (CBET) curriculum has been successfully implemented globally.