Factors associated with Clinical Nursing and Midwifery Research Topics Published in Southern and Eastern African Countries

Abstract

While clinical nursing research priorities should be determined regional experts, evidence suggests that they may be guided more by the needs of research funders. However, we could not find any studies to assess what drives the research produced by nurses and midwives in southern and eastern African countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess factors associated with clinical nursing and midwifery research found in both indexed and grey literature within this region. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study using Poisson and categorical regression to determine predictors of clinical research within the region. Information about country, date, level of education of the first author, author affiliations, collected through scoping reviews of the grey and indexed literature was used as was information from a Delphi survey (that identified regional clinical nursing and midwifery research priorities) to assess factors associated with clinical nursing and midwifery research in southern and eastern African countries from 2004 to 2014. Topics with a critical priority ranking from the Delphi survey were associated with appearing fewer times in the literature, compared to those topics that were not ranked as a priority (IRR of .39, 95% CI [.20, .77]). Percent increase in number of publications was a 19.1% for every one additional first author with an international affiliation (IRR 1.19, 95% CI [1.15, 1.23]). The odds of appearing in grey literature to indexed literature were 492% higher for publications by first authors with a doctorate compared to those with a bachelor's degree or less (OR 4.92, 95% CI [1.93, 12.49]). The odds of appearing in the grey literature compared to indexed literature was 83.8% lower for those topics with major funding compared to unfunded topics (OR .16, 95% 95% CI [.04, .67]). Percent relative growth in publication output from 2004 to 2013 was 115%. Clinical nursing and midwifery research in southern and eastern African countries may not be driven by regional needs. Aligning research with local priorities will ensure that nurses and midwives have the evidence base needed to improve patient outcomes.