Abstract
For over 150 years, nurses have been providing anaesthesia services independently. With varying autonomy, today nurse anaesthetists provide services in many countries around the globe, on continents including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Africa. It is estimated that 5 billion of the world’s population do not have access to safe and affordable surgical and anaesthesia care, many of whom live in low and middle-income countries. One-third of the global burden of diseases could be addressed by surgical care, which encompasses surgery, obstetrics, trauma, and anaesthesia. Deleterious to this burden of disease, there is a severe shortage of anaesthesia providers in low and middleincome countries like South Africa. The World Health Assembly approved a resolution that recognises the importance of emergency and essential surgical care and anaesthesia as part of universal health coverage. There is currently no professional registration available in South Africa for nurse anaesthetists by which they prescribe and administer anaesthesia and chemical pain management services to patients. The question can be asked: What can be done to ensure that safe and affordable anaesthesia services can be provided in South Africa? In response, this study’s primary purpose is to propose a model and guidelines for implementation for a nurse anaesthetist model for practice which is contextually appropriate for South Africa. To achieve this, this study followed a theory-generating, qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual design. Chinn and Kramer’s (2015:165-183; 2018:169-186) guidelines on theory development were used as a foundation for this study. This study was conducted in four steps:...
D.Cur. (Professional Nursing)