Integrative Review of Intervention Programmes for School Health Nurses on Their Activities in School Environment (1)

Aim: This paper reviews descriptive and quasi-experimental studies on the intervention programme developed for school health nurses in order to assist them in different activities which they perform in the school environment. The review was as a result of the need to conduct an integrative review of intervention programmes developed for school health nurses on guiding adolescents about their reproductive health. However, there is a dearth of studies on this particular area, and this prompted the authors to expand the scope to cover the intervention programme developed for school health nurses in other areas of concern.

Methods: Two review questions were raised which prompted the search for articles to provide necessary answers. Computerized database, ancestry and extensive search strategies by titles of research reported in English between 2000 and 2015 located diverse intervention programmes. A total of 1980 articles were retrieved from which 11 were reviewed after series of filtering based on titles, abstracts, full texts, and duplicates had taken place. A broad range of intervention programmes were reported.

Results: The most common intervention programme is training programme which is six in number, followed by education and mentoring programmes which are two each while the number of orientation programme is one. The aims of almost all these programmes was to enhance the knowledge and skills of school health nurses in their areas of practice. Common methodological weakness was small sample.

Conclusion: Integrative review reveals that school health nurses are subject mainly to a training programme in order to enhance their performance in their roles and responsibilities toward adolescents in the secondary school environment.