Abstract
The voluntary counselling and testing lay counsellors are not employees of the City
of Johannesburg at Region F, but rather receive stipend money as an incentive from
the non-governmental organisations. The voluntary counselling and testing lay
counsellors seem to be unhappy and dissatisfied about their functions as
demonstrated by their irregular attendance at the voluntary counselling and testing
sites. It became difficult for the voluntary counselling and testing clients to access the
voluntary counselling and testing service in the absence of the voluntary counselling
and testing lay counsellors as they had to wait in the long queues in order to be
attended to by the professional nurses. In most instances, the voluntary counselling
and testing clients decided rather to leave the clinics without being attended to.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of the
voluntary counselling and testing lay counsellors and professional nurses with
regard to voluntary counselling and testing services offered in the City of
Johannesburg at Region F. To address the problem a contextual, qualitative,
exploratory, and descriptive phenomenological, research design was used in this
study. A purposive sampling method was used. Individual, in-depth,
phenomenological, semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. The
interviews were directed by two open-ended research questions. A model of
trustworthiness with four components namely, credibility, transferability,
dependability, and confirmability was followed. An open coding, qualitative data
analysis method was used. The ethical considerations were taken into account. The
results from the analysis of the transcriptions were described. Three main themes
(1) lack of appropriate counselling rooms, (2) increased workload and staff
shortages (3) lack of motivation and support and their related sub-themes in table
3.1 were identified and conceptualised within the existing literature and concluding
statements were made.
The supporting guidelines to improve the performance of the voluntary counselling
and testing lay counsellors in conducting counselling and testing along with the
limitations, recommendations, and conclusions of the study were described.
M.Cur. (Community Nursing Science)