Understanding nurses’ work to care for sick newborns

To really understand the work of nurses in very busy wards where care for sick newborns is provided, you have to be there. Using detailed observations, day, night and weekends, linked to narrative interviews, the routines, compromises and coping strategies that characterise the delivery of hospital care for newborns are brought to light providing critical information to understand why care is missed and to guide improvement efforts. Interview recorded in 2018

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Jacinta Nzinga is a post-doctoral social scientist with the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Nairobi. She has a PHD in Health and Social Studies (University of Warwick) and a masters degree in global health (Oxford University). Jacinta is adjunct faculty with the institute of health care management at Strathmore Business School, Kenya and visiting lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK and Pwani University in Kenya.

Her research work and interests are mainly in the areas of management of human resources for health, health policy analysis and the interpretive analysis of their implementation, organizational change and implementation of innovation, organizational behavior and clinical leadership and health system governance.  

Jacinta co-leads the ethnographic element of the Health Services that Deliver for Newborns (HSD-N) study. She recently won an HSRI development grant as a co-applicant to develop health workforce research on the role of nursing in the delivery of quality of care, focusing on nurse identity and nurse leadership.