Participating in Critical Discourse: A Critical Research Study of Clinicians’ Concerns for A Ghanaian Hospital E-mail System

Abstract

A growing body of information systems (IS) literature advocates the explicit use of suitable critical theories to explore power issues in developing countries and make IS research findings more accessible to systems' users and the wider audiences for consumption. We respond to this debate in IS by applying critical research perspectives to discuss the power implications of Internet and e-mail resource distribution in a Ghanaian teaching hospital in a way that addresses clinicians' concerns of using Internet services for healthcare practices. We applied critical qualitative approaches to collect and analyse data from clinicians, healthcare managers and the hospital's internal documents. It was found that managers exercised their powers to allocate Internet facilities selectively on the contestable account that clinicians might misuse the Internet if they were given access and that they would seek to empower themselves as coplanners who could make technology choices and add new value to the existing normative decisions of the managers. The outcomes show that critical researchers can directly relate to decision-making powers, recognise their powers and expose structures that surround them, and emancipate people whose Internet resource needs are restricted to co-involve in technology adoption and distribution processes.

The impact of digital health technologies on the quality of service delivery: A pre and post assessment of the healthcare consumer's experiences in Ghana

“…These included (1) ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) Policy; (2) Proposals for Ghana eHealth Strategy; (3) Health Sector's ICT Policy and Strategy; (4) eHealth plan: 2007–2011 and (5) Ghana E‐health strategy 2010 (Afagbedzi et al, 2013). The developments of these strategies by the MoH were collectively geared towards an improvement of the health sector by ensuring high‐quality service delivery and, ultimately, decreasing the risk of morbidity and mortality rates of its citizens (Nyame‐Asiamah & Kawalek, 2020). Despite the efforts made, Nyame‐Asiamah and Kawalek (2020) reported that the Ghanaian health sector is still constrained by health workers' skill set, equipment and logistics supply, as well as poor ICT delivery services, which characterize most DCs.…”

Improving fire risk communication between authorities and micro‐entrepreneurs: A mental models study of Ghanaian central market fires

“…We employed interpretivist traditions to explore the mental models of the studied risk communicators, but as reflexive researchers we accept that sentiments around empowerment can be explored through critical research and this philosophical viewpoint offers prospect for future iteration of this study (see Nyame-Asiamah & Kawalek, 2020). This study took a lengthy period to complete and some fire risk communication activities and fire incidents occurred between the first and second phases of data collection which might have affected the findings.…”