Mapping evidence on community service nurse practitioners’ experiences and practices during service placement in sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review

Community Service Nurse practitioners are newly graduated professional nurses who are mandated to serve in public health facilities for a minimum period of one year before registration as Professional Nurses. Since its inception, several experiences have been reported on the practice and experiences regarding Compulsory Community Service (CCS). To date, empirical evidence is yet to be consolidated into a comprehensive account of new nurse graduates’ experiences and practices during service placement, particularly in the sub-Saharan African context. To synthesize evidence on community service nurse practitioners’ experiences and practices during service placement in sub-Saharan Africa. A scoping review was conducted using the methodological framework by Arksey and O’ Malley. The Population, Concept and Context (PCC) framework was used to identify relevant studies using keywords with Boolean operators in electronic databases, namely CINAHL, Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. A modified data extraction tool was used to extract relevant studies, and findings are reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Thematic content analysis is subsequently used to provide a narrative account of the review. A total of 17 articles were included in the review. The majority of studies consisted of grey literature (n = 11), while the remaining were peer-reviewed publications (n = 6). Most studies were conducted in South Africa (n = 15) while the remaining were from Namibia and Lesotho, respectively (n = 1). Community service nurse practitioners’ experiences and practices during service placement relate to challenges associated with lack of support during placement, human and infrastructure challenges, and reality shock associated with the practice environment. The findings broadly highlight the need for interventions to address the theory–practice divide between undergraduate training and clinical practice as a professional.