Nurses’ Involvement in the Care of Orphans and Vulnerable Children in a Southwestern City in Nigeria: A Qualitative Study from Nurses and Caregivers’ Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This study explored nurses’ involvement in the care of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) in orphanages using the exploratory qualitative method. Data were collected from fifteen nurses and fourteen caregivers of OVC using in-depth interviews. Nurses’ involvement was operationalized as nurses’ current and nurses’ expected roles in providing health care services for OVC. Health promotion and disease prevention, diagnosis and management of common illnesses and advocacy emerged as themes for nurses’ current roles, while health promotion and disease prevention, provision of basic health care services, advocacy, referrals for specialized care & services, and counseling services emerged as nurses’ expected roles. This study showed that curative health care services were the major focus of nurses’ involvement in the care of OVC and these care were provided mainly in the hospital. The study concludes that health care services provision for OVC by nurses should not be hospital-based only. It should be extended to the orphanages where these OVC live through regular visits by nurses to the orphanages. This visitation to the orphanages will give room for early detection and prevention of illnesses before they aggravate.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

• Nurses’ role is primarily curative; more preventive and health promoting health care services are needed.

• Nursing care is provided mainly in the hospital; regular health visits to OVC in orphanages are needed.

• Nurses attending to OVC need to be trained specifically to care for OVC.

KEYWORDS:

• Nurses’ roles
• health services
• vulnerable children
• orphanages
• Nigeria

Acknowledgments

The authors warmly appreciate all the nurses and caregivers that participated in this study as well as orphanages that gave information about where children in their homes receive health care services.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.