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Background Nurses provide comprehensive, person-centred care to patients of all ages with any condition to save and protect lives. Caring for children under 5 years with burns involves high-level skills, agility and stable emotions. This study sought to explore nurses’ experience when managing children under five years with burns at the burns unit of a teaching hospital in Ghana.Methods An exploratory, descriptive qualitative approach was used with a purposive sampling method to recruit 15 participants at saturation from the Burns Unit. The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. With participants’ consent, their voices were audio-recorded. Data were transcribed verbatim after the researchers listened to the audios several times. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis.Results Narratives of the nurses were represented as emotional experiences, challenges and coping strategies associated with caring for children with burn injury. Mental representation of care task, grief and sadness, helplessness and impatience were identified as the emotional experiences. Increased workload, lack of adequate motivation and shortage of hospital supplies were the main challenges. Teamwork, good working relations, effective work-life balance and emotional detachment were the coping strategies the nurses adopted.Conclusion This study highlighted the experiences of nurses caring for children under five years with burns. The work environment of nurses created stress and increased the burden of care. Nurses need support to recognise and manage their physical, emotional and social responses to their work. In addition, periodic staff training must be promoted to boost staff confidence and enhance their efficiency on the job.

Background: A significant factor impacting the incidence of maternal and neonatal fatalities is the timely initiation of antenatal care (ANC) services in healthcare facilities. Despite the recommendations by the World Health Organization and the numerous benefits of timely initiation of ANC, studies have revealed that the overall prevalence of timely ANC initiation in 36 sub-Saharan African countries remains low and women in The Gambia also initiate ANC late. However, no known study in The Gambia has focused on assessing the factors associated with timely initiation of ANC at the time of writing this paper. Thus, this study aimed to assess the prevalence and factors associated with the timely initiation of ANC among reproductive-age women in The Gambia. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was used in this study and conducted among 5,734 reproductive-age women using data from the 2019–2020 Gambia Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS). Using STATA version 14.0, we conducted the analysis using descriptive and inferential statistics. Multilevel logistic regression models were fitted to determine the factors associated with timely ANC utilization and adjusted odds ratios were used to present the results with statistical significance set at p< 0.05. Results: The overall prevalence of timely initiation of ANC services among reproductive-age women in The Gambia was 43.0%. We found that women aged 30–34 [aOR = 1.79, 95% CI = 1.30–2.47], those who were married [aOR = 2.69, 95% CI = 1.85–3.90] as well as women from the richest households [aOR = 1.63, 95% CI = 1.20, 2.20] had higher odds of seeking timely ANC services as compared to their counterparts. Also, those who had given birth to two children [aOR = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.6 -0.91] had lower odds of initiating timely ANC as compared to those who had given birth only once. Women who reside in rural areas [aOR = 1.72, 95%CI = 1.34, 2.20] also had higher odds of seeking timely ANC services than those residing in urban areas. Conclusion: Individual-level factors such as maternal age, marital status, parity, wealth status, place of residence, and religion were associated with the timely initiation of ANC services among reproductive-age women. These factors ought to be considered in efforts to increase the timely initiation of ANC among reproductive-age women in The Gambia.