An Integrative Literature Review on Existing Education Programmes for the Improvement of QOL of PLHIV

Background: This review examined and described existing characteristics of education programs which contributed towards the development of an education program for the improvement of QoL of PLHIV on ART. The research question that guided the study was, “What are the characteristics of existing education programs?” Methods: All studies which directly developed a program were assessed for relevance. Only articles written in English from January 2010 to 2021 were retrieved and no authors were contacted. Studies that did not directly develop a program were excluded. The Boolean words “OR” and “AND” were used in conjunction with the following search keywords/ statements: Program development and HIV; Designing an education program and HIV; Development of a program and HIV and education programs and HIV. Critical appraised checklist tools were employed which are Bowling’s and Pearson checklists. Results: Six themes addressing the review question emerged which are needs assessment, program objectives, theory-based methods and strategies, planning and development of the program, program implementation and program evaluation. From the reviewed articles, all thirteen had needs assessment as an initial step in their program development followed by twelve articles which mentioned program implementation and also twelve articles which had a planning and development of a program step. Out of the thirteen articles eleven conducted a program evaluation while nearly half of the articles had program objectives as their second step in development of a program. Conclusions: The findings of this review demonstrated that in the articles searched and reviewed, there were no programs that adequately addressed QoL. This implies that there is no uniform standard in addressing this phenomenon. However, the result suggests important steps to consider when developing a program. Therefore, for a program to be successful and solid, one needs to consider six themes. It is also evident from the review that similar measured results from existing programs can be used to develop education programs that can contribute towards the improvement of QoL of PLHIV on ART.