Week 7...the FINAL COUNTDOWN (yes, the 80s band Europe, the oh so familiar piano riff, aquanet, and hair....lots of hair)

In writing my annotated bibliography this week I chose the references that were the most authoritative, relevant, and beneficial to me in answering my research question. In addition to this criteria, I also discriminated based on the type of reference to ensure that I presented a variety of work. To that end, my annotated bibliography includes three books, two peer-reviewed professional journal articles, and a empirical article. I am pleased to say that I was able to conduct most of my research using resources from the Leatherby Libraries. When I first heard one of the new student orientation briefers touting the boundless virtues of the Leatherby Libraries services back in August I felt fairly resolved that I would likely not be paying an online library service a visit a time soon. However, a fundamental consequence of receiving an education on any new topic is having one’s perspectives and ideas questioned and even challenged. In this case I am glad that I had the opportunity of this course setting me straight about the Leatherby Libraries early on so that I can carry it’s resources with me into futures courses and research work at Brandman. Two of my book references I discovered directly on the library’s homepage using an ‘Advanced Search’ and the other book I discovered through Google as a first step, then clicking into World Health Organization’s website I was able to download an electronic version of the book from the WHO’s impressive database of research files and resources. As for the professional journal articles, I found one doing a journal subject search on Leatherby and for the other I resorted to Googling for an applicable article, then discovering one that seemed promising I took the article’s title with me back over to Leatherby for a journal search by the title and eureka it was there! Lastly, the empirical article I found using Leatherby Library’s ‘Academic Premier Search.’ In the past three weeks of my research I have discovered a surprising amount of informative, reliable research that has answered my research question quite thoroughly!  There isn’t any particular aspect of my research topic that I feel remains lacking or unanswered. Therefore, my plan is to use the research time next week to reexamine all of the answers I’ve formulated to my research question and ensure that they are as clear, relevant, and concise as possible.

Week 6

Week 5

Bowden, S., Braker, K., Checchi, F., & Wong, S. (2012). Implementation and utilisation of community-based mortality surveillance: a case study from Chad. Conflict and Health, 6, 11.     http://doi.org.libproxy.chapman.edu/10.1186/1752-1505-6-11

So let me start this by confessing that I severely underestimated 'subject specific database' research on Wednesday evening as Dr. Dunn talked us through it in class. Upon conducting a few quick classroom database searches with subjects like "social science" and "healthcare communication" I had pretty much resigned this assignment to being completed with the assistance of my research assistant and mentor, Mr. G.O. Ogle. Of course,  I'd be sure to write that I had literally given the Leatherby databases the 'ol college try'. So I was really quite surprised to find this article and several others like it when I went back into the databases and searched using the 'Nursing' subject (an idea I got from the class handout on database subjects...and from Daniella in class but don't tell her I admitted she told me so). Additionally, unlike many other research resources I’ve used in studying this topic, this article does not group it’s information about Chad into a compiled study or analysis along with other countries in the Sub-Saharan region. Rather, it’s dedicated to analyzing mortality surveillance in Chadian healthcare systems exclusively.

This article confirmed a suspicion that I had, based on other research, that maternal and child mortality reporting processes were not up to par in Chad. Some of the reasons that it specifically cites have been added to my body of research. These reasons are, a lack of consistent, standardized processes for mortality documentation, making the vital record easier to overlook or more likely to be reported incorrectly. Also the lack of community health care workers contributes to improper reporting and documentation, especially in emergency situations when workers are task saturated. Another reason that was discovered was illiteracy and language barriers between healthcare workers and patients. A considerable amount of Chadians are illiterate and there are currently approximately 120 languages and dialects spoken in the country. Finally, the analyst recounted that violence and security incidents significantly interrupted the records keeping process on multiple occasions. Six different times during the four-year study they noted that mortality data was not recorded for a whole month due to the security threats.

With the article’s special emphasis on record keeping practices for women and children there was the implication that these practices were particularly more lax. This concept invoked some questions that I’ve had now for a few weeks but have not yet delved into answering. After the information I’ve learned in this article I want to finally commit to researching the political and cultural mindsets concerning the value of women and children in Chad and the behaviors, customs, and laws that are or are not in place protecting them or contributing to their mortality.