Abstract
Community engagement is one of the functions of higher education, alongside teaching and research. Despite that, teaching and research silos are observed to be priorities at many academic institutions. Community engagement activities require a planned approach, yet most academic institutions do not have support in place for faculties to run those activities. In addition, community engagement is a small and under-researched area and not much attention is paid on how universities collaborate and produce knowledge in that area. The same observation is made in the Faculty of Health Science at a public university in Namibia. Furthermore, despite the 10% of academic time allocated for community engagement, it was not clear what it entails and how the staff and students should undertake it. The purpose of the study was to develop, describe and evaluate strategies to facilitate community engagement in the Health Science Faculty at an institution of higher education in Namibia. The study followed a qualitative exploratory, descriptive and contextual design, which was conducted in four phases. In Phase One, a concept analysis for community engagement was conducted following the basic principles of Walker and Avant’s model. Phase Two explored and described the perceptions of academic staff with regard to how community engagement can be facilitated within the Faculty of Health Sciences. The study included 19 academic staff members who were purposively selected, and data were collected via focus group discussions. The data analysis process followed a method of analysing phenomenological data proposed by Giorgi. Quality was ensured by adhering to the four criteria for developing trustworthiness of a qualitative enquiry as proposed by Lincoln and Guba. The researcher also adhered to the four ethical principles of Dhai and McQuoid-Mason, namely the principles of respect and autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice. Five major themes and their sub-themes emerged as findings of Phase Two of this study. The first theme is the facilitation of community engagement through communication, marketing and external relations. The sub-themes are marketing of community engagement activities, meetings, training, inducting and mentorship of academic staff, stakeholders’ engagement and partnership, community participation, community entry process, appointment of community engagement focal person/convener, attitudes and characteristics of academic staff. The second theme is the facilitation of community engagement through research-based viii activities, and the sub-themes are: community-based collaborative research, research ethics, incentives and recognition of academic staff. The facilitation of community engagement through curriculum-based activities emerged as a third theme. The sub-themes are students’ assessment, use of community experts, curriculum development processes and students’ involvement. The fourth theme is the facilitation of community engagement through clinical practice and work-based learning. Sub-themes are home visits, rural clinical placements, interprofessional education and practice. The fifth theme is the facilitation of community engagement through university/ faculty services and volunteering. Volunteering and donations, disease outbreak response, participation in health and social events, planning of community engagement activities and a community call centre emerged as sub-themes. Phase Three constituted the conceptualisation of findings from Phases One and Two. It was conducted based on Dickoff, James and Wiedenbach’s six elements of practice theory. The fourth phase of the study focused on the development, description and evaluation of strategies to facilitate community engagement in the Faculty of Health Sciences. The development and description of strategies followed the descriptive components of empiric theory as proposed by Chinn and Kramer. However, the researcher modified the original components as some are not applicable to this study. An evaluation of strategies was done by a group of experts in the Faculty of Health Sciences, following the criteria of clarity, simplicity, generality, accessibility and importance, as developed by Chinn and Kramer. Lastly, the original contribution, limitations, recommendations and conclusion of the study were described.
D.Cur. (Nursing Science)