GrammaticoTPTQualHCW

Description

This dataset represents perspectives from 22 nurses, from primary care clinics in rural South Africa, about barriers to implementation of TB preventive therapy. A decade after South Africa adopted tuberculosis preventative therapy (TPT), uptake remains sub-optimal. Primary care clinic nurses participated in semi-structured individual interviews. Transcripts were thematically analyzed to assess knowledge and attitudes toward TPT in rural South Africa. Among 22 senior nurses interviewed, 86% were female, with median age 39 years, and mean 13.3 years experience. Participants identified key individual-level barriers among nurses and patients and organizational barriers. While the nurses’ belief in TPT efficacy was strong, their perceived barriers to TPT implementation included inflexible clinical guidelines, insufficient training and time to counsel patients, pill burden, and patients’ alcohol use. Nurses believed implementation could be facilitated with task-shifting and integrating TPT into the antiretroviral therapy infrastructure in primary care clinics and into chronic medication dispensing programs. Shorter TPT regimens (e.g., 3HP) were considered advantageous. Task-shifting and HIV/TB integration were deemed crucial to TPT implementation. Nurses’ perspectives are essential to improving TPT implementation efforts in resource-limited settings.

Steps to reproduce

The research team approached senior nurses about their impression of the TB preventive therapy rollout. After verbal informed consent, individual, face-to-face interviews were conducted in private rooms within the clinic according to the language preference of the participant (English or Zulu). The majority of the interviews were completed on the same day as the quantitative survey. At least one professional nurse was interviewed at each of the 15 primary care clinics. No incentives were offered for participation.

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