Abstract
Adolescent and Youth Friendly Service (AYFS) is a health service offered by the National Department of Health in Primary Healthcare (PHC) facilities to provide integrated quality health care to pupils between 10 and 24 years old. The National Department of Health introduced AYFS to improve healthcare for young people, yet research by Sibaya (2022) indicates that most clinics in Ekurhuleni are not youth-friendly. This lack of accessible and supportive services may contribute to poor adolescent health outcomes, including limited access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.
The purpose of the study was to explore and describe the experiences of primary health care nurses (PHC) in implementing the AYFS in the Ekurhuleni North Sub-district to make recommendations to improve AYFS policy implementation. The research objectives are to explore and describe the experiences of PHC nurses regarding the implementation of adolescent and youth-friendly services and to make recommendations from the findings for PHC nurses on the implementation of adolescent and youth-friendly services.
This research benefited from employing a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual research design. Such an approach is relevant as qualitative studies are intended to explore and achieve a comprehensive understanding of the study in the context of primary health care nurses providing AYFS in the Ekurhuleni Sub-District. The researcher adopted a non-probability sampling, which was more suitable for this study because the research aims to explore the lived experiences of PHC nurses on the implementation of AYFS. For data collection, semi-structured interviews were conducted, and data were captured through transcripts and audio-recordings. Interview skills were used, including leading questions and probing.
There was no direct benefit to the participants of this study. The researcher did not have any risk associated with this research as no participant's identity or the name of the clinical facility was mentioned. In this study, thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Six central themes, accompanied by 12 sub-themes, emerged from the data analysis. The primary themes and sub-themes are discussed in detail below. The major factors that lead to youth clients discouraging their peers from using the AYFS included unfriendly service providers and long waiting times. In conclusion the results of this study helped the study to meet its objectives of exploring the perceptions of primary health care nurses on AYFS in South Africa. Participants confirmed that space, finances, infrastructure, and absence of a designated AYF nurse are contributing to the barriers to efficient AYFS.