Health Facility as a Social Construct: Examining the Dynamics of Staffing, Power Relations, and Negotiated Order

Abstract

Human resources is key to delivering health care services in a health facility. Working in an entity for a certain period, meeting with the same group of people during that time and having continuous interactions and interrelationships amongst the group, may open up the space to have a conducive atmosphere among the staff. Such interactions and interrelationships among the health care workers are crucial windows to peep into the health facility, delivery of health care services, and the emerging negotiated order. Based on ethnographic information acquired from a health facility in the Lakhanpur area in present-day Madhesh Province, this paper shows the dynamics of staffing, power relationships, and the negotiations among the healthcare workers and their collective impacts on the healthcare service delivered through the very institution.