Dr. Rachel Arnold’s recent paper in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth was highlighted in a blog promoted by the publisher. The paper ‘Villains or victims? An ethnography of Afghan maternity staff and the challenge of high quality respectful care‘ reports on the everyday lives of maternal healthcare providers working in a tertiary maternity hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan (1).
BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth is an Open Access journal so the paper is available free of charge to anybody in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) with an internet connection. The aim was to understand the staff’s notions of care, their varying levels of commitment to providing care for women in childbirth, and the obstacles and dilemmas that affected standards, and thereby gain insight into their contributions to respectful maternity care, whether as ‘villains’ or as ‘victims.’
Dr. Arnold is Postdoctoral Midwifery Researcher in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH). This is the third paper from Rachel’s excellent PhD project, the previous two papers appeared in BJOG and Social Science & Medicine (2-3).
Click here for BMC Blog post:
Villains or victims? The role of maternity staff in decreasing or enhancing respectful care
Reference:
- Arnold, R., van Teijlingen, E., Ryan, K., Holloway, I. (2019) Villains or victims? An ethnography of Afghan maternity staff and the challenge of high quality respectful care, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 19 :307 https://rdcu.be/bPqlj
- Arnold R., van Teijlingen E, Ryan K., Holloway I. (2015) Understanding Afghan health care providers: Qualitative study of culture of care in Kabul maternity hospital, BJOG 122: 260-267.
- Arnold, R., van Teijlingen, E., Ryan, K., Holloway, I. (2018) Parallel worlds: an ethnography of care in an Afghan maternity hospital, Social Science & Medicine 126:33-40.






Daniel Hills (FMC PGR) has recently returned from the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School. This year it was held at Tartu University, Estonia between 9th to 16th July.
I gained a great deal of insights, useful techniques and a re-ignition of enthusiasm towards my research throughout the 8 days, and would encourage anybody whom is more than a year into their research to apply for the 2020 version. I graduated with 10 ECTS points on the final day, but more importantly new-found knowledge and a new direction to progress with my PhD, and a whole lot of new friends and peers. I am planning on writing a paper with one of my new friends whom is interested in a similar field to my own. All in all, the ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School has been one of the most useful academic experiences of my career to date.
Daniel Hills is a PhD researcher in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, and is focusing his research in advertising planning and practice theory, aiming to complete in 2020.

















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