IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v45y1997i12p1845-1852.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Professionalism, patient satisfaction and quality of health care: Experience during Zimbabwe's structural adjustment programme

Author

Listed:
  • Bassett, Mary Travis
  • Bijlmakers, Leon
  • Sanders, David M.

Abstract

In 1991, Zimbabwe embarked on a structural adjustment programme. In the health sector, collection of fees was enforced and fees were later increased. Utilisation subsequently declined. This paper examines the perceptions of both government nurses and health care consumers regarding the impact of adjustment on overall quality of care, including nurse professionalism, the nurse-client relationship and patient satisfaction with care. These issues were explored in a series of focus group discussions held in December 1993, about three years after policy reforms. The discussions suggested many areas of shared concern (fees, drug availability, waiting times), but divergent views regarding the process of care. Nurses were concerned mainly with overwork and patient ingratitude, and failed to recognise nurse behaviour as a major source of patient dissatisfaction. Community women saw nurses as hardened and indifferent, especially in urban areas. These differences are rooted in the perceived class differences between nurses and the communities they serve, but appear to have sharpened during the period of structural adjustment.

Suggested Citation

  • Bassett, Mary Travis & Bijlmakers, Leon & Sanders, David M., 1997. "Professionalism, patient satisfaction and quality of health care: Experience during Zimbabwe's structural adjustment programme," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(12), pages 1845-1852, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:45:y:1997:i:12:p:1845-1852
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(97)00122-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Makate, Marshall & Makate, Clifton, 2016. "Demand for prenatal care and its impact on neonatal, infant and child mortality in Zimbabwe: Evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys," MPRA Paper 72805, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Jul 2016.
    2. Grépin, Karen A. & Bharadwaj, Prashant, 2015. "Maternal education and child mortality in Zimbabwe," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 97-117.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:45:y:1997:i:12:p:1845-1852. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.