The Social Basis for Patient-Female Nurse Misunderstandings: Reflections from Muleba and Chato Districts

Abstract

Recent studies in Tanzania have revealed the nature and magnitude of patients’ abuse and neglect under maternity care. However, the question of female nurses as main perpetrators of such misconducts has not been addressed. Quantitative data collected from systematically sampled health care users and qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with healthcare providers in Chato and Muleba districts were used to explain the uneasy relations between patients and female nurses. The findings revealed that abusive nurses are mainly female nurses, perceived by patients as uncaring and less compassionate than their counterpart male nurses who are caring and empathetic. Viewed using the lenses of symbolic interactionism, such abusive behaviours displayed by female nurses are responses to patients’ demeaning behaviours of regarding female nurses as a weak category of health providers in terms of their expertise and professional skills. Additionally, female nurses, who also occupy inferior social positions like other women, use medical power embodied in the control of medical information to elevate their gender position in medical settings and wider social settings, but in the process of achieving this goal they abuse patients. Any efforts to improve patient-female nurse relations need to consider women’s position in general social settings and medical settings.