Perspectives in Development: The Problem of Nurses and Nursing in Zambia

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Perspectives in Development: The Problem of Nurses and Nursing in Zambia
Author:	Schuster, Ilsa
Year:	1981
Periodical:	Journal of Development Studies
Volume:	17
Issue:	3
Period:	April
Pages:	77-97
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zambia
Subjects:	women's employment health personnel Health and Nutrition Women's Issues Development and Technology Education and Oral Traditions
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388108421799
Abstract:	Traditional Zambian society did not associate the healing process with young women. Modern health planners accepted without question the necessity of training young women as nurses to work in the modern health care setting. Recruits, who tended to be one generation removed from traditional life, imperfectly socialised into the modern health setting, tended to accept, unquestioningly, inherently conflicting traditional and western concepts of illness and healing, as did the wider society. Parallel conceptualisations and the overcrowding of medical facilities contributed to the growing perception of hospital settings as houses of death by the general public. Nurses, whose contact with the general public was greater then other health service personnel, came to be the focus of public abuse; their own ambivalence toward their work exacerbated this confrontation. As actors in a wider society, nurses were part of the first generation of subelite urban women, and as such their position was also fraught with ambivalence. Notes, ref., tab.