Villains or victims? An ethnography of Afghan maternity staff and the challenge of high quality respectful care.

Background: Healthcare providers are the vital link between evidence-based policies and women receiving high quality maternity care. Explanations for suboptimal care often include poor working conditions for staff and a lack of essential supplies. Other explanations suggest that doctors, midwives and care assistants might lack essential skills or be unaware of the rights of the women for whom they care.

Parallel worlds: An ethnography of care in an Afghan maternity hospital.

Aspirations of quality, equitable and respectful care for all women in childbirth have, so far, been unrealised. Sub-optimal care remains the norm in many settings despite decades of substantial investment, the introduction of evidence-based policies, procedures and training programmes. Improving the standard of facility-based care for childbearing women in Afghanistan is an example.

Living with a long-term condition: Understanding well-being for individuals with thrombophilia or asthma.

A range of literature has explored the experience of living with a long-term condition (LTC), and frequently treats such experiences and conditions as problematic. In contrast, other research has demonstrated that it may be possible to adapt and achieve well-being, even when living with such a condition. This tends to focus on meaning and the qualitative experience of living with an LTC, and offers alternative perspectives, often of the same or similar conditions.

Comfort vs risk: a grounded theory about female adolescent behaviour in the sun.

Aims And Objectives: To generate a grounded theory about female adolescent behaviour in the sun.

Background: Nurses have key roles in health promotion and skin cancer prevention. Adolescents' resistance to sun safety messages and their vulnerability to sunburn are of concern internationally.

Being a qualitative researcher.

This article, from a keynote address, is the result of some of the things which I learned about qualitative research during my many years of doing and teaching it. The main point I make is that qualitative researchers should present a good story which is based on evidence but focused on meaning rather than measurement. In qualitative inquiry, the researchers' selves are involved, their experiences become a resource.

Running free: embracing a healthy lifestyle through distance running.

Sport and leisure activity contribute to both health and quality of life. There is a dearth of qualitative studies on the lived experiences of active people, so the aim of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the experiences of one particular group of active leisure participants, distance runners, and to highlight the associated health and well-being benefits that result from participating in this increasingly popular form of active leisure. In doing so, this paper will briefly explore the potential opportunities and implications for sport and leisure policy and provision, and highlight examples of how distance running could positively contribute towards government objectives linked to tackling obesity levels, healthy living and physical well-being.

Parental distress around supplementing breastfed babies using nasogastric tubes on the post-natal ward: a theme from an ethnographic study.

There is abundant evidence of the benefits of breastfeeding. In the UK, supplementation in hospital has consistently been shown to be associated with shortened duration of breastfeeding. This paper reports on a subset of the data from an ethnographic study that explored the expectations, beliefs and experiences of mothers and health professionals concerning supplementation, using a variety of methods, of breastfed babies in an English maternity unit in 2002.

Achieving normality: the key to status passage to motherhood after a caesarean section.

Objective: to explore women's experiences of caesarean section.

Design: a qualitative study using a grounded theory approach. Data were collected using unstructured, tape-recorded interviews which took place between 1999 and 2000.

The stigmatisation of people with chronic back pain.

Purpose: This study responded to the need for better theoretical understanding of experiences that shape the beliefs, attitudes and needs of chronic back patients attending pain clinics. The aim was explore and conceptualise the experiences of people of working age who seek help from pain clinics for chronic back pain.

Methods: This was a qualitative study, based on an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA).

Perseverance by older people in their management of chronic pain: a qualitative study.

Introduction: Many older people suffer from degenerative and chronic diseases resulting in chronic pain. It is important for health professionals and researchers to gain insights into experiences of chronic pain sufferers, so that they may understand the patient's perspective and instigate appropriate treatments.

Aim: This study set out to gain insights into older people's perceptions about the effect of chronic pain on their lives and how they self-manage it.

The efficacy of midwifery role models.

Aim: to explore the influence of midwifery role models on the role that student midwives learn.

Design: a qualitative approach using specifically grounded theory, was adopted. Data were collected by means of unstructured tape-recorded interviews, and analysed using the constant comparative method.

The experience of chronic back pain: accounts of loss in those seeking help from pain clinics.

Background: This study responded to the need for greater understanding of the experiences that help to shape the worldviews of chronic back patients as they seek help from pain clinics.

Aim: To elaborate on the lived experience of chronic back pain in those actively seeking help from pain clinics.

Methods: This was a qualitative study, based on an interpretative phenomenological approach.

The cup-versus-bottle debate: a theme from an ethnographic study of the supplementation of breastfed infants in hospital in the United kingdom.

This article reports 1 theme from an ethnographic study that aimed to describe the experiences, expectations, and beliefs of mothers and health care professionals concerning supplementation in a UK maternity unit. Observation was conducted on the postnatal ward and the newborn infant unit, and 30 mothers, 17 midwives, 4 neonatal nurses, 3 health care assistants, 3 senior house officers, and 3 senior pediatricians gave in-depth interviews during a 9-month period in 2002. One of the major themes that emerged was the cup-versus-bottle debate.

Supplementing breast-fed babies in the UK to protect their mothers from tiredness or distress.

Objective: To explore mothers' and healthcare professionals' beliefs, expectations and experiences in relation to supplementation of breast feeding in the postnatal ward and newborn-baby unit.

Design And Method: A qualitative study using an ethnographic approach which involved participant observation and interviews. Analysis of the observation data informed who would be approached for interview and interviews also guided further observation work.

In the system: the lived experience of chronic back pain from the perspectives of those seeking help from pain clinics.

Narrative accounts of their lived experiences were collected from twenty back pain patients who were seeking help from two pain clinics in the UK. Following analysis using a phenomenological approach, five themes emerged which tell a typical story of back pain. One prominent emergent theme, 'in the system', is reported in which participants tell how they became entrapped within the medical, social security and legal systems.