IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v64y2007i6p1153-1165.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nursing in Bangladesh: Rhetoric and reality

Author

Listed:
  • Hadley, Mary B.
  • Roques, Angie

Abstract

In the past decade concern has been raised through independent channels that nurses in Bangladesh do not provide active hands on care directly to patients as envisioned when the British nursing model was first introduced decades ago. The objective of the study was to observe the activities nurses engaged in during their working hours on major medical and surgical wards. A total of 24,587Â min of nursing activities were recorded by three observers in 18 hospitals between the hours of 05.00 and 23.00Â h over a 3 month period. These were compared with reports of the nurses about their activities, and indirectly with the activities outlined in the nursing curriculum. Nurses in government hospitals spent only 5.3% of their working time in direct contact with their patients. Paperwork and indirect patient care occupied nurses for 32.4% of their time while 50.1% fell under the category of unproductive time such as time away from the ward and chatting with other nurses. Hospital support workers and patients' relatives acted as nurse surrogates. When asked how they spent their day, nurses reported what the curriculum specifies but not what was observed. As a consequence policy decisions have not consistently reflected this reality. By contrast, nurses in the hospitals outside the government system were found to spend 22.7% directly with patients. A deeper understanding of nurse's behaviour on the wards is required to determine the desired role of the nurse that will, in turn, feed into nursing policy and decisions related to resource allocation.

Suggested Citation

  • Hadley, Mary B. & Roques, Angie, 2007. "Nursing in Bangladesh: Rhetoric and reality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(6), pages 1153-1165, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:64:y:2007:i:6:p:1153-1165
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(06)00338-8
    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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zaman, Shahaduz, 2004. "Poverty and violence, frustration and inventiveness: hospital ward life in Bangladesh," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(10), pages 2025-2036, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Biswas, Debashish & Hossin, Raduan & Rahman, Mahbubur & Bardosh, Kevin Louis & Watt, Melissa H. & Zion, Mazharul Islam & Sujon, Hasnat & Rashid, Md Mahbubur & Salimuzzaman, M. & Flora, Meerjady S. & Q, 2020. "An ethnographic exploration of diarrheal disease management in public hospitals in Bangladesh: From problems to solutions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    2. Melberg, Andrea & Diallo, Abdoulaye Hama & Storeng, Katerini T. & Tylleskär, Thorkild & Moland, Karen Marie, 2018. "Policy, paperwork and ‘postographs’: Global indicators and maternity care documentation in rural Burkina Faso," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 28-35.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hadley, Mary B. & Blum, Lauren S. & Mujaddid, Saraana & Parveen, Shahana & Nuremowla, Sadid & Haque, Mohammad Enamul & Ullah, Mohammad, 2007. "Why Bangladeshi nurses avoid 'nursing': Social and structural factors on hospital wards in Bangladesh," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(6), pages 1166-1177, March.
    2. Biswas, Debashish & Hossin, Raduan & Rahman, Mahbubur & Bardosh, Kevin Louis & Watt, Melissa H. & Zion, Mazharul Islam & Sujon, Hasnat & Rashid, Md Mahbubur & Salimuzzaman, M. & Flora, Meerjady S. & Q, 2020. "An ethnographic exploration of diarrheal disease management in public hospitals in Bangladesh: From problems to solutions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    3. Taufique Joarder & Asha George & Syed Masud Ahmed & Sabina Faiz Rashid & Malabika Sarker, 2017. "What constitutes responsiveness of physicians: A qualitative study in rural Bangladesh," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-19, December.
    4. d'Alessandro, Eugénie, 2015. "Human activities and microbial geographies. An anthropological approach to the risk of infections in West African hospitals," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 136, pages 64-72.
    5. Pitchforth, Emma & Lilford, Richard J. & Kebede, Yigzaw & Asres, Getahun & Stanford, Charlotte & Frost, Jodie, 2010. "Assessing and understanding quality of care in a labour ward: A pilot study combining clinical and social science perspectives in Gondar, Ethiopia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(10), pages 1739-1748, November.

    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:64:y:2007:i:6:p:1153-1165. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.