Motivators and Barriers to the Pursuit of Advanced Nursing Education in Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction:  Nursing is a profession that keeps evolving in order to improve care for persons, families and communities as a whole. Education is an important tool of training and retraining these professionals in order to make them keep up with the pace of practice and consequently improve outcome of the healthcare system. Thus, a need to understudy advanced nursing education motivators and barriers in Nigeria. Study Aim: This study was aimed at finding motivators and barriers to the pursuit of advanced nursing education in a teaching hospital in Nigeria.  Methodology: This is a descriptive correlation study conducted to identify factors that promote and deter nurses from the pursuit of advanced nursing education in Nigeria. The population was made up of nurses from a teaching hospital in Nigeria.  Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 180 elements from the population. Data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 18(SPSS 18). Results: Findings showed that majority of nurses were interested in advanced nursing education. However, the tuition fees for such education was high. The findings also showed that job security, increased salary, and promotion were motivators for the pursuit of advanced nursing          education. Conclusion: The study concluded that job incentives, job security, increased salary, and promotion are motivators for the pursuit of advanced nursing education while cost of tuition, work life balance and family commitment are barriers to the pursuit of advanced nursing education. The study therefore recommended that policy makers should make efforts to provide adequate job incentives for nurses and reduce the cost of tuition for advance nursing education to an affordable level.