Nursing Ethics Education and Practice in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

Whereas nursing profession helps the well and the sick regain independence as rapidly as possible, nursing ethics education provides the basis for effective professional practice.Objectives: This study sought to identify factors affecting nursing ethics education and to describe impact of nursing ethics education on nursing practice. Method: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted, and two sets of questionnaires were developed and administered, one to 80 final year nursing students, the other to 60 nursing teachers in four universities. The questionnaires had 18 and 21 question items respectively covering demography of the respondents, knowledge from ethics education, factors affecting ethics education and impact of ethics education on nursing practice. Nominal scale data were collected and analyzed on a Microsoft Excel spread sheet. Frequencies and percentages of responses were calculated and tabulated under question categories.Results: Response rate was 86.3% for students and 51.7% for teachers. Although nursing ethics education is provided as a whole semester course, 51% of students and 80% of the teachers erroneously understand ethics as adherence to professional code of conduct. Even so 70% of both respondent groups were prepared to practice effective nursing. Meanwhile 82% of the students and 53% of teachers were of the view that professional negligence is a major ethical issue in practice. Conclusion: The nursing profession is committed to providing ethical practice, but the practitioners and their trainees lack the correct knowledge of what ethics really means. Due to this incorrect knowledge undue attention is being given to professional negligence. It is a challenge and may be giving rise to a protectionist practice. The inclusion of specialists in ethics or moral philosophy to teach nursing ethics as well as the adoption of dialogic and case study methods of teaching will avoid these challenges and enhance the proper understanding and application of principles and theories of ethics in nursing practice

Bayelsa, in search of a sustainable health financing scheme

Background: A sustainable health care financing scheme has been difficult to establish in Bayelsa State. This is evident in the different attempts at fashioning an effective health financing scheme by subsequent governments.Objectives: This study sought to identify principles that would guide the effective implementation of a health financing scheme.Method: Methods of health care financing were examined by means of documentary analysis, interviews with programme managers and questionnaire administration to health service users.Results and analysis: In 2012 budgetary allocation to the State Hospitals Board and the Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital were just 0.15% and 0.70% respectively. Before 2000 less than 0.14% of national budget was allocated to patient care. These meagre allocations were because the same source that funds patient care services also funds health research, capital projects and overhead costs of all health agencies.Conclusion: Although Bayelsa is a developing state, a sustainable health financing scheme will depend on a health system that allows efficiency in programme management, effectiveness of facilities and workforce professionalism. It is therefore suggested that attention should be given to the health system first because it is there that any sustainable scheme will operate in.Keywords: Healthcare, health financing, health insurance, health polic

Law and ethics of strikes in the Nigerian health system

Despite that health services are essential, health sector strikes have continued.  The purpose here was to examine the legal and ethical justification of strikes in the  Nigerian health sector. Documentary analysis and literature reviews were carried out. It was found that the Trade Disputes Act and the National Health Act do not provide for strikes by health workers. Virtue ethics does not also recognize health sector strikes. Although definite claim to the rightness or wrongness of the actions of health workers may be difficult, compliance or non-compliance to professional pledges can be associated with rightness or wrongness of their actions. It is concluded that trustees of the public health have a duty and are under obligation to respect human dignity at all times. This is because health sector strikes reflect a loss of the values of professional ethics by health workers. Discussions in bioethics among health workers can redress this loss by targeting the affective domain in health workers' learning during training.Keywords: Compliance, Deliberate acts, Duty, Health workers, Obligation

Making African NGOS more responsive to social needs

The development of institutionalized voluntary sector or the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa is a complementary response to the shortfall in public sector provision. But that development was made possible because of the existence of communitarian principles of advocacy, obligation and responsibility, already practised in the extended family before the arrival of the European Christian missions. The success of foreign NGOs is due to the management principles of openness, accountability and non-distributiveness demonstrated in their operations. It is proposed that African NGOs should apply their communitarian principles to these management principles, so as to become more responsive to the needs of their people. In this way African NGOs will be able to tap into their local resource base to fund more good causes as well as contributing towards an inclusive and sustainable bottom-up democratic welfare system. African Journal of Social Work Vol.17(1) 2002: 39-5

Medicine and politics: the convergence from a Nigerian perspective

Although medicine and politics are distinct subjects and among the oldest professions, there have been calls for medical doctors to get involved in active politics. Thus this study sought to identify and describe the relationship between medicine and politics by doing conceptual analysis of themes that are common to both disciplines. It was found that the relationship between medicine and politics has not been properly examined, especially from the Nigerian perspective. But the two professions are found to be related in the field of Social Sciences in the areas of their practitioners’ calling and levels of their operation. The paper however argued that when medical practitioners abandon their duty of care to patients and seek to acquiesce to politics it is because there is a sense of loss of the leadership influence among them in the body politics of society. It concludes by suggesting that the loss can best be retrieved from the health discipline of public health, which is the point of convergence of both professions.Keywords: Leadership, Public health, public policy, politics, public interes

Responding to the Call through Translating Science into Impact: Building an Evidence-Based Approaches to Effectively Curb Public Health Emergencies [Covid-19 Crisis]

COVID-19 demonstrated a global catastrophe that touched everybody, including the scientific community. As we respond and recover rapidly from this pandemic, there is an opportunity to guarantee that the fabric of our society includes sustainability, fairness, and care. However, approaches to environmental health attempt to decrease the population burden of COVID-19, toward saving patients from becoming ill along with preserving the allocation of clinical resources and public safety standards. This paper explores environmental and public health evidence-based practices toward responding to Covid-19. A literature review tried to do a deep dive through the use of various search engines such as Mendeley, Research Gate, CAB Abstract, Google Scholar, Summon, PubMed, Scopus, Hinari, Dimension, OARE Abstract, SSRN, Academia search strategy toward reretrieving research publications, “grey literature” as well as reports from expert working groups. To achieve enhanced population health, it is recommended to adopt widespread evidence-based strategies, particularly in this uncertain time. As only together can evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) can become a reality which includes effective policies and practices, transparency and accountability of decisions, and equity outcomes; these are all more relevant in resource-constrained contexts, such as Nigeria. Effective and ethical EIDM though requires the production as well as use of high-quality evidence that are timely, appropriate and structured. One way to do so is through co-production. Co-production (or co-creation or co-design) of environmental/public health evidence considered as a key tool for addressing complex global crises such as the high risk of severe COVID-19 in different nations. A significant evidence-based component of environmental/public health (EBEPH) consist of decisions making based on best accessible, evidence that is peer-reviewed; using data as well as systematic information systems; community engagement in policy making; conducting sound evaluation; do thorough program-planning frameworks; as well as disseminating what is being learned. As researchers, scientists, statisticians, journal editors, practitioners, as well as decision-makers strive to improve population health, having a natural tendency toward scrutinizing the scientific literature aimed at novel research findings serving as the foundation for intervention as well as prevention programs. The main inspiration behind conducting research ought to be toward stimulating and collaborating appropriately on public/environmental health action. Hence, there is need for a “Plan B” of effective behavioural, environmental, social as well as systems interventions (BESSI) toward reducing transmission