Development of a Capability Maturity Model for the Establishment of Children’s Nursing Training Programmes in Southern and Eastern Africa 

Abstract Background: Developing high-quality and sustainable training programmes to meet the increasing demand for specialist children’s nurses in African countries requires collaborative efforts by multiple stakeholders, systems and organisational tiers. This is made more challenging in the absence of a comprehensive framework for specialist nursing educational programme development. This project set out to develop a Capability Maturity Model in order to systematically describe the essential capacity required to establish a new specialist children’s nursing education programme in an African context. Methods: Previous Capability Maturity Models developed in the fields of nursing regulation and human resources for health information systems were used to guide the process of development. A six-stage process was followed to: identify necessary supportive conditions; specify levels of process maturity; develop domains; characterise levels of capability; consult with stakeholders; and finalise the model. Results: The process resulted in the identification of set of five step-wise progressions for each of five stakeholder activity domains, and the creation of a comprehensive Capability Maturity Model describing five levels of process maturity in relation to education, clinical and regulatory systems, human resources for health systems, and requirements related to overall stakeholder collaboration. Stakeholder consultation confirmed the accuracy and applicability of the model. Conclusions: The model successfully makes visible the wide range of regulatory and associated processes involved in developing a new educational programme for specialist nurses, including educational standards, quality assurance, scopes of practice, and systems for licensing and registering specialist children’s nurses. Stakeholders will be able to sue the model as a map to identify where they are in the process, and establish the resources and actions needed to make further progress.