“Just like the users, we suffer too!” “experiences” of health workers in health facilities in Lomé (Togo)

Abstract

While there is now a rich literature on health care structures in Africa, few have been devoted to both public, private and confessional health facilities and have empirically explored health care providers’ "real life” or “experiences" beyond their interactions with the care receiver. Based on a chapter of our doctoral thesis under way, this contribution analyses the physical, social and psychological "experiences" of health professionals in the gynaecological-obstetrical services of three health facilities in Lomé. They belong respectively to the private, public or religious sectors. By dint of a strictly qualitative approach mixing basically semi-structured interviews and systematic and intensive observations, the empirical data produced over ten (10) months allow us to show that regardless of their health care sectors and health facilities which do not have the same configurations, the health workers have the same "experiences". Relatively painful, these "experiences" restructure the representations that these professionals have of themselves and their work, and condition their behaviour and attitudes in their daily interactions with users.

Keywords: caregivers, "experiences/ real life", interaction, health training, Lomé