Abm Alauddin Chowdhury

Job satisfaction among nurse‘s in public and private sector in Dhaka City of Bangladesh: a comparative study

Nurses need enthusiasm and feeling love, caring attitude and alarming concern to fulfill the needs of their patients. Nursing is an identified noble profession that has relations with the healing ability and a sense of reflection to serve humanity. Disparity in health care sectors including reorganization, redesigning, escalate the roles of health care professionals are the cause of nurses to enlarge their responsibilities. They have to face many awkwardness in providing care to the patients with their quick changing roles and separate environment. Moreover, worldwide nursing is dealing with the shortage of work force that creates a significant threat which is society‟s most vulnerable populations and has adverse implications for the quality of health care. Dealing with these situations, nurses‟ job satisfaction has become a major concern in the health care sector globally. Quality assurance in health includes all the movements taken to encourage and intensify health care.

Traditional healing practices in rural Bangladesh: a qualitative investigation

BackgroundTraditional healing practice is an important and integral part of healthcare systems in almost all countries of the world. Very few studies have addressed the holistic scenario of traditional healing practices in Bangladesh, although these serve around 80% of the ailing people. This study explored distinctive forms of traditional healing practices in rural Bangladesh.MethodsDuring July to October 2007, the study team conducted 64 unstructured interviews, and 18 key informant interviews with traditional healers and patients from Bhabanipur and Jobra, two adjacent villages in Chittagong district, Bangladesh. The study also used participatory observations of traditional healing activities in the treatment centers.ResultsMajority of the community members, especially people of low socioeconomic status, first approached the traditional healers with their medical problems. Only after failure of such treatment did they move to qualified physicians for modern treatment. Interestingly, if this failed, they returned to the traditional healers. This study identified both religious and non-religious healing practices. The key religious healing practices reportedly included Kalami, Bhandai, and Spiritual Healing, whereas the non-religious healing practices included Sorcery, Kabiraji, and Home Medicine. Both patients and healers practiced self-medication at home with their indigenous knowledge. Kabiraji was widely practiced based on informal use of local medicinal plants in rural areas. Healers in both Kalami and Bhandari practices resorted to religious rituals, and usually used verses of holy books in healing, which required a firm belief of patients for the treatment to be effective. Sorcerers deliberately used their so-called supernatural power not only to treat a patient but also to cause harm to others upon secret request. The spiritual healing reportedly diagnosed and cured the health problems through communication with sacred spirits. Although the fee for diagnosis was small, spiritual healing required different types of treatment instruments, which made the treatment implicitly expensive.ConclusionsTraditional healing was widely practiced as the means of primary healthcare in rural areas of Bangladesh, especially among the people with low socioeconomic status. The extent of services showed no decline with the advancement of modern medical sciences; rather it has increased with the passage of time.

Factors influencing the initiation of smokeless tobacco consumption among low socioeconomic community in Bangladesh: a qualitative investigation

This study explored factors influencing the initiation of smokeless tobacco (SLT) consumption in a low socioeconomic urban community in Bangladesh. The study conducted four focus group discussions among 33 informants involves school teachers, community leaders, women, and betel-nut shops owners. The results were prepared by thematic analysis of the transcripts where informants mean age was 30 (SD ± 6.8) years with varying level of education. Tradition of hospitality, curiosity, offer from an elderly person, and avoiding nausea during pregnancy and at time of quitting smoking were key factors for the initiation of SLT consumption. The results also revealed most people were aware about the danger of SLT consumption but, in practice, consumed frequently. The research suggested that doctors might advise people not to use any form of SLT while they seeking health services. Furthermore, community-based awareness program could minimize the wider use of SLT among low-income community in Bangladesh.

Status of Knowledge on the Risk Factors of Low Birth Weight among the Women of Reproductive Age in Rural Bangladesh

Background: Low birth weight (LBW) is one of the major public health problems in developing countries, like Bangladesh. Maternal knowledge is directly involved with the status of birth of her baby. Very little is known about the knowledge on the risk factors of LBW babies in rural life context of Bangladesh. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among the selected reproductive age women of the village Vagna and Shubadda in Kearanigonj sub-district under Dhaka District with a view to assess the level of knowledge about risk factors of low birth weight. A total of 300 reproductive aged women were interviewed purposively using semi-structured questionnaire. Results: The study reported around two-third (64.0%) of the respondents had mentioned that they had perceived knowledge about the low birth weight. Among all the maternal risk factors, anemia was identified by two-fifth of participants (40.0%) followed by malnutrition (18.6%). The study documented only a little less than one fifth of the respondents had knowledge that lack of antenatal care in pregnancy can cause of LBW newborn. Bivariate analysis found statistically significant association between knowledge on low birth weight and respondent’s age (P=0.001), education (p=0.001), occupation (p<0.001) and their guardian’s education (P=0.001) and occupation (P<0.05). However, education is the most important determinant to have the knowledge about the risk factors and prevention measure of LBW. Conclusion: The study findings observed that women lack the knowledge on risk factors of low birth weight in terms of mothers’ risk factors, complication and prevention of low birth weight. The study focused more attention to some affecting factors of the low birth weight with the mother’s education, occupation, health status and antenatal care service. The LBW scenario may be reduced in expected rate if health policy makers consider the urgent intervention raising the awareness about the risk factors of LBW, and also providing much reproductive education to the problem of low birth weight.