Abukari Kwame, PhD

Person-centered care (PCC) is crucial to patient engagement in healthcare enhancing patients' participation in critical care decision-making, increasing care disclosure, reducing medication errors, and promoting satisfaction with care outcomes. Healthcare management and leadership practices contribute to effective communication and interactions between healthcare providers and patients, which is vital for quality PCC outcomes and patient perceptions of care providers. However, little is known about how nursing leadership influences PCC and clinical interactions in the Ghanaian setting, which this study saw as a gap and aims to fill. This paper reports data from interdisciplinary exploratory qualitative research to examine the impacts of nursing leadership practices on nurse-patient relationships and care outcomes. Nurses (11), patients (22), and caregivers (11) participated in the study. Data were gathered in Ghana through interviews, focus groups, and participant observations and analyzed thematically. The three themes which emerged were: hospital leadership and the nursing staff, healthcare management practices, and communication barriers regarding how nursing leadership impacts PCC. Poor relationships between nurses and hospital leaders affected nurses' caring practices. Management practices, including an annual rotation of nurses across different patient wards and exigent patient record management routines, negatively impacted care delivery and patient-provider interactions. These leadership practices and the strained relationships between nurses and hospital leaders potentially derail effective PCC. Nursing and hospital managers must embrace transformational leadership and healthcare management practices, especially in resource-scare settings, that foster a trusting care culture and/or environment for therapeutic nurse-patient relationships to thrive and for PCC to be actualized.

Communication during a crisis can affect crisis management and health outcomes. Only a few studies in Africa have examined political leaders’ speeches on Covid-19 pandemic preventive and restrictive lockdown measures. The purpose of this study is to examine the discourse strategies employed in President Nana Addo’s speeches delivered to Ghanaians on the measures taken to combat the coronavirus. The first ten speeches of Nana Addo since the inception of Covid-19 were selected, coded, and examined using content thematic analysis. The analysis of these speeches identified five main themes to capture the discourse strategies which President Nana Addo used. The strategies captured in the thematic analysis included framing Covid-19 as a war, encouraging nationalism and patriotism, showing appreciation and gratitude, threatening sanctions, and using religious values. These strategies were reinforced by using religious, moralizing, and national identity legitimation discourses to justify me...

Background: The impact of addiction extends beyond the individual using a substance. Caring for an individual with addiction creates persistent stressful circumstances that cause worry, anger, depression, shame, guilt, anxiety, and behavioral problems within the family unit.The aim of the study: The paper aims to explore the psychological impact when caring for individuals with active addictions and self-care strategies caregivers employ.Methods: The study adopted an exploratory qualitative design and used purposeful sampling to recruit study participants through posters, word-of-mouth, and e-mail. Study participants were required to have a family member living with addiction and not be active substance users themselves. In-depth individual interviews were conducted among 21 participants to gather their experiences, meanings, and interpretation of how it feels to provide care for a family member suffering from addiction and substance use.Results: Three themes, whose overarching focu...

How children break into language has been a contested issue among both linguists and behavioural psychologists for a very long time. Among the various competing theories on child language acquisition are the universal grammar (nativism/innateness) and the interactionists perspectives. This paper explores how these two theories account for the acquisition of phonological and sign language by reviewing current research in the fields of child first language and simultaneous bilingual first language learners. And based on empirical research findings, I argue that at issue is the discourse on the role of input in language acquisition given that both theories agree on innate biological endowment to language learning. Hence, my conclusion is that, the innateness and interactionists arguments can be framed in terms of language competence and performance among first language learners.

Providing healthcare services that respect and meet patients’ and caregivers’ needs are essential in promoting positive care outcomes and perceptions of quality of care, thereby fulfilling a significant aspect of patient-centered care requirement. Effective communication between patients and healthcare providers is crucial for the provision of patient care and recovery. Hence, patient-centered communication is fundamental to ensuring optimal health outcomes, reflecting long-held nursing values that care must be individualized and responsive to patient health concerns, beliefs, and contextual variables. Achieving patient-centered care and communication in nurse-patient clinical interactions is complex as there are always institutional, communication, environmental, and personal/behavioural related barriers. To promote patient-centered care, healthcare professionals must identify these barriers and facitators of both patient-centered care and communication, given their interconnection...

This study investigates the acquisition of articles in L2 English by L1 speakers of Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Dagbani differs from English in that it has two definite articles, no indefinite article, and a zero-article which may express definiteness, indefiniteness as well as genericity. The study consisted of a Forced-choice task (FCT) and an Acceptability judgement task (AJT) which were administered to Dagbani teenagers with an intermediate proficiency in English (n = 45) and a group of native English speakers as controls (n = 8). The results showed that the learners’ article choice was based on definiteness, not specificity (i.e., no fluctuation between the two) and that they had slightly more problems with indefinite than definite contexts, while generic contexts were the most problematic. Except for a certain task effect as well as a possible interference of instruction (in the FCT), the results can be argued to generally be due to influence from the L1 and to th...

This article is a contribution to the ongoing discussions on who should conduct indigenous research and problematizes the notion of insider/outsider discourse in indigenous research. Drawing on my personal experiences in the form of case studies, I argue that self-locating in indigenous research is complex given that researcher self-positioning is not normally done by the researcher but through a process of negotiation with the participants. I argue that insofar as indigenous peoples, communities and problems are not islands onto themselves, immune to the current global flows, processes and barriers, indigenous research cannot be reserved only for indigenous scholars and peoples. Instead, I propose a reflexive researching model as a research framework which should be incorporated into an indigenous research methodology which both indigenous and allied non-indigenous researchers could draw upon. This demands a reflexive practice that is guided by the philosophical underpinnings of th...

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by world leaders on September 25, 2015, aimed to end poverty and hunger, promote gender equity, empower women and girls, and ensure human dignity and equality by all human beings in a healthy environment. These development goals were premised on international human rights norms and institutions, thereby acknowledging the relevance of human rights in achieving each goal. Particularly, sustainable development goal 3, whose objective is to achieve universal health coverage, enhance healthy lives, and promote well-being for all, implicitly recognizes the right to health as crucial. Our focus in this paper is to discuss how promoting patients’ rights and enhancing effective nurse-patient communication in the healthcare setting is a significant and necessary way to achieve universal health coverage. Through a critical review of the empirical research evidence, we demonstrated that enhancing patients’ rights and effect nurse-patient communication w...

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by world leaders on September 25, 2015, aimed to end poverty and hunger, promote gender equity, empower women and girls, and ensure human dignity and equality by all human beings in a healthy environment. These development goals were premised on international human rights norms and institutions, thereby acknowledging the relevance of human rights in achieving each goal. Particularly, sustainable development goal 3, whose objective is to achieve universal health coverage, enhance healthy lives, and promote well-being for all, implicitly recognizes the right to health as crucial. Our focus in this paper is to discuss how promoting patients' rights and enhancing effective nurse-patient communication in the healthcare setting is a significant and necessary way to achieve universal health coverage. Through a critical review of the empirical research evidence, we demonstrated that enhancing patients' rights and effect nurse-patient communication will promote people-centered care, improve patients' satisfaction of care outcomes, increase utilization of care services, and empower individuals and families to self-advocate for their health. These steps directly impact primary healthcare strategies and the social determinants of health as core components to achieving universal health coverage. We argue that without paying attention to the human rights dimensions or employing human rights strategies, implementing the other efforts will be inadequate and unsustainable in protecting the poorest and most vulnerable populations in the achievement of goal 3.

Summary of evidence table. The analysis and findings of the review paper titled, "Communication in nurse-patient interaction in healthcare settings in sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review" is based on the data presented in this table. The data in this table forms the primary evidence extrated from all the included studies in the scoping review report.

Background: The impact of addiction extends beyond the individual using a substance. Caring for an individual with addiction creates persistent stressful circumstances that cause worry, anger, depression, shame, guilt, anxiety, and behavioral problems within the family unit.The aim of the study: The paper aims to explore the psychological impact when caring for individuals with active addictions and self-care strategies caregivers employ.Methods: The study adopted an exploratory qualitative design and used purposeful sampling to recruit study participants through posters, word-of-mouth, and e-mail. Study participants were required to have a family member living with addiction and not be active substance users themselves. In-depth individual interviews were conducted among 21 participants to gather their experiences, meanings, and interpretation of how it feels to provide care for a family member suffering from addiction and substance use.Results: Three themes, whose overarching focu...

Culture, traditional practices, and social norms of different societies have been found to have great impact on healthcare systems and people understanding of health and illness. This paper discusses how the Dagomba of Ghana theorizes health and illness and the impact of language and secrecy in traditional healing. Using the Dagomba lay theories of health and illness and that of medical pluralism, the paper found that among Dagomba, the concepts of health and illness are complex, holistic and interrelated. The Dagomba theorized that health is a discourse and a relational concept. It is also seen as being in a state of balance with the self, others, the society and the spiritual world but not the absence of illness. The paper argues that illness among Dagomba has both internal and external dimensions. It is seen as something which is part of life and growing up. Accordingly, some illnesses are innate while others come and go. Within their traditional healthcare system, language and s...

Background The impact of addiction extends beyond the individual using a substance. Caring for an individual with addiction creates persistent stressful circumstances that cause worry, anger, depression, shame, guilt, anxiety, and behavioral problems within the family unit. The aim of the study The paper aims to explore the experiences of caring for a relative with a substance use disorder (SUD) and self-care strategies caregivers employ. Methods The study adopted an exploratory qualitative design. To be included in the study, participants were required to have a relative with a (SUD) disorder and not be actively using the substance themselves. Individual interviews were conducted to gather their experiences, meanings, and how they made sense of caring for a relative with a SUD. Results Twenty one participants were involved in the study, of which 17 were women, and four were men of which there had a sister, four had a brother, eight had a parent, six had a dependent, and one partici...

Cross-linguistically, personal pronouns are noted as being deficient in relation to some morphosyntactic and phonological properties. Some striking asymmetries have been identified between strong and weak personal pronouns in relation to modification, coordination/conjunction, whether they have a semantic referent, and can encode focus. This study explores the personal pronominal system of Dagbani along Cardinaletti and Starke’s (1994) typology and observed asymmetries. Using insights from published literature on Dagbani pronouns as well as my understanding as a native speaker, I argue that, unlike personal pronouns in Romance/Germanic languages, Dagbani personal pronouns can be modified by quantifiers, can be coordinated, and can occur in conjunction constructions, as well as encode topic and focus as salient semantic discourse properties. Furthermore, the pre/post verbal distinctions among nonemphatic pronominal forms in Dagbani still hold, even as these occur in coordinated and m...

Background: Patients' full participation or nonparticipation in the care process, compliance with medical advice, and taking personal control of their health, to some extent, are influenced by the quality of nurse-patient interaction and communication. The impact of poor communication among nurses can be detrimental to the quality of care, nursing practices, and safety, which suggests that communication competence is a required skill in the nursing profession. The aim of this review was to explore communication strategies in nurse-patient interaction and how that affects patient participation in the care process in sub-Saharan Africa and to identify the major findings and gaps in the literature. Methods: To undertake this scoping review, keywords such as nurse-patient, provider-patient, nurse-client, nurse-healthcare consumer, interact*, communication, relationship, Africa, and Africa south of the Sahara were used and combined with the Boolean operators OR/AND. Thirty-two studies were retained for this current review, which included 29 articles, two theses, and one dissertation. Results: The study found that communication in nurse-patient interaction has been researched in a few countries in sub-Sahara Africa in HIV/AIDS, maternal and reproductive care, intensive and palliative care, operative/ postoperative care, and primary healthcare settings. The results suggested that nurse-patient communication studies need to extend to other healthcare contexts. Furthermore, in many of the healthcare areas studied, nurse-patient communication has been poor, with care providers dominating the process. Most nurses neglect patient needs and concerns as well as abuse and humiliate them, especially in maternal/antenatal and primary healthcare settings in public healthcare facilities. Excessive workload, shortages of nursing staff, poor communication skills, and lack of involvement of nursing managers in the care process negatively impacts on nurses' ability to interact effectively with their clients. Conclusion: We thus argue for the inclusion of communication skills in nursing training programs as well as the engagement of nursing managers and healthcare administrators in strengthening communication within the nurse-patient dyad.

In this study, I employed interpretive ethnographic qualitative design to explore perceptions of and proposals from traditional healers, biomedical practitioners, and health care consumers regarding integrating traditional medicine and healing in Ghana. Data were gathered through focus groups, in-depth individual interviews, and qualitative questionnaires and analyzed thematically. The results revealed positive attitudes toward integrating traditional medicine in Ghana and a discursive discourse of power relations. The power imbalance between biomedical and traditional practitioners regarding what integrative models to adopt is sanctioned by formal education and institutional structure. As a result, multiple approaches for integration were made, including patient co-referrals, collaborations between biomedical and traditional medical practitioners, and creating a unit for traditional medicine and healers at the outpatients’ department for patients to choose either biomedicine or tra...

Providing healthcare services that respect and meet patients' and caregivers' needs are essential in promoting positive care outcomes and perceptions of quality of care, thereby fulfilling a significant aspect of patient-centered care requirement. Effective communication between patients and healthcare providers is crucial for the provision of patient care and recovery. Hence, patient-centered communication is fundamental to ensuring optimal health outcomes, reflecting long-held nursing values that care must be individualized and responsive to patient health concerns, beliefs, and contextual variables. Achieving patient-centered care and communication in nurse-patient clinical interactions is complex as there are always institutional, communication, environmental, and personal/ behavioural related barriers. To promote patient-centered care, healthcare professionals must identify these barriers and facitators of both patient-centered care and communication, given their interc...

This study investigates the acquisition of articles in L2 English by L1 speakers of Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Dagbani differs from English in that it has two definite articles, no indefinite article, and a zero-article which may express definiteness, indefiniteness as well as genericity. The study consisted of a Forced-choice task (FCT) and an Acceptability judgement task (AJT) which were administered to Dagbani teenagers with an intermediate proficiency in English (n = 45) and a group of native English speakers as controls (n = 8). The results showed that the learners' article choice was based on definiteness, not specificity (i.e., no fluctuation between the two) and that they had slightly more problems with indefinite than definite contexts, while generic contexts were the most problematic. Except for a certain task effect as well as a possible interference of instruction (in the FCT), the results can be argued to generally be due to influence from the L1 and t...

Providing healthcare services that respect and meet patients' and caregivers' needs are essential in promoting positive care outcomes and perceptions of quality of care, thereby fulfilling a significant aspect of patient-centered care requirement. Effective communication between patients and healthcare providers is crucial for the provision of patient care and recovery. Hence, patient-centered communication is fundamental to ensuring optimal health outcomes, reflecting long-held nursing values that care must be individualized and responsive to patient health concerns, beliefs, and contextual variables. Achieving patient-centered care and communication in nurse-patient clinical interactions is complex as there are always institutional, communication, environmental, and personal/ behavioural related barriers. To promote patient-centered care, healthcare professionals must identify these barriers and facitators of both patient-centered care and communication, given their interconnections in clinical interactions. A person-centered care and communication continuum (PC4 Model) is thus proposed to orient healthcare professionals to care practices, discourse contexts, and communication contents and forms that can enhance or impede the acheivement of patient-centered care in clinical practice.

This paper explores social interaction and relationship building around greeting, sharing drinks, and kola nut in Dagbon society and the cultural discourses and performatives enacted by the engaged participants. I argue that in Dagbon society, how greeting, sharing drinks, and kola nuts are done reflect the symbolic meanings and interpretations people give to the actions and behaviors of others as they engage in social interactions and relational exchanges. These relational discourses and dialogues surrounding greeting, sharing kola, and drinks also depend on the values, customs, epistemic traditions, and belief systems of the Dagomba. Furthermore, orality, cultural competence, age, and to some extent, gender play significant roles in the social-relational arenas involving these items. Thus, a greeting is a relational gesture and a recognition of the presence of others. Moreover, in sharing drinks or kola, notions of mutual interdependency, reciprocity, and harmonious coexistence are expressed and honored.

This article discusses segment deletion as a morphophonological process in Dagbani compound word formation from a quantitative linguistics perspective. Three independent variables: the nature of constituent contact margin (C#V, V#C, N#C, V#V), compound type (NN, NA, NV, VN) and word length were considered to determine which of them is more likely to predict segment deletion (C, CV, V, Ø) in compound formation. Classification and regression trees (CART) and Random forest analysis were performed on 265 sampled compound words. The analysis revealed that the nature of constituent contact margin was more likely to predict segment deletion in Dagbani compound formation than compound type and word length. Furthermore, the commonly deleted segments in compound formation were found to be vowels and CVs. The study concludes that these processes are due to the combined interaction of Dagbani phonology and morphology to ensure that the new words formed adhere to the phonotactics and morpheme structure constraints of the language.

Abstract
This article is a contribution to the ongoing discussions on who should conduct indigenous research and problematizes
the notion of insider/outsider discourse in indigenous research. Drawing on my personal experiences in the form of case
studies, I argue that self-locating in indigenous research is complex given that researcher self-positioning is not normally
done by the researcher but through a process of negotiation with the participants. I argue that insofar as indigenous
peoples, communities and problems are not islands onto themselves, immune to the current global flows, processes and
barriers, indigenous research cannot be reserved only for indigenous scholars and peoples. Instead, I propose a reflexive
researching model as a research framework which should be incorporated into an indigenous research methodology
which both indigenous and allied non-indigenous researchers could draw upon. This demands a reflexive practice that is
guided by the philosophical underpinnings of the indigenous research paradigm.

How children break into language has been a contested issue among both linguists and behavioural psychologists for a very long time. Among the various competing theories on child language acquisition are the universal grammar (nativism/innateness) and the interactionists perspectives. This paper explores how these two theories account for the acquisition of phonological and sign language by reviewing current research in the fields of child first language and simultaneous bilingual first language learners. And based on empirical research findings, I argue that at issue is the discourse on the role of input in language acquisition given that both theories agree on innate biological endowment to language learning. Hence, my conclusion is that, the innateness and interactionists arguments can be framed in terms of language competence and performance among first language learners.

The term indigenous peoples', indigenous rights and the content of such rights have their origins in the events and developments leading to the formation of the international indigenous peoples' movement. And given the historical perspectives on indigenous peoples' engagement with the UN and its human rights commissions, indigenous peoples in African and the challenges they go through in their rights claims are affected by the historical development within the international arena. This in part was due to their late appearance in the international scene and in part also due to the nature of the colonial history of Africa. More so, the lack of local indigenous movements at the time of the making of the international movement and the low levels of education among African indigenous peoples were also among the factors. African indigenous peoples have had persistent violations of their rights to land, natural resources, religion and culture over the years. Despite these struggles, there have also been some improvements in recent times in how indigenous peoples and their rights and demands are perceived. African governments should do well to support these groups by recognizing their rights and making changes within the political and legal institutions that guarantee the protection of their indigenous peoples and their rights. 1 This paper was first submitted to the Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Tromso, as a course paper in SOA-3006, Indigenous Culture, Resource Management and Territorial Rights, during the Autumn of 2014. It also formed the basis of my Oral exam in that same course. I am very grateful to Velina Ninkova (the Internal examiner) and the External examiner for their comments and suggestions during the Oral exam. The revision done in this current paper is based on their comments and suggestions.

Indigenous peoples' rights to self-determination, land and natural resources have been established in international law and in many regional and sub-regional human right bodies. However, indigenous peoples access and claims to these rights have been highly contested in many nation states. Why this ambivalence within the indigenous peoples' right discourses constitute the main argument of this essay. The paper provides an historical overview of the development of political theory of sovereignty and contractual governance and property rights based on John Locke's philosophies in relation to indigenous societies and land use systems. The paper then concludes that the denial of indigenous peoples the rights to land and self-determination are influenced by the historical antecedence and apparent fears of threats to nation state territorial integrity.

Culture, traditional practices, and social norms of different societies have been found to have great impact on healthcare systems and people understanding of health and illness. This paper discusses how the Dagomba of Ghana theorizes health and illness and the impact of language and secrecy in traditional healing. Using the Dagomba lay theories of health and illness and that of medical pluralism, the paper found that among Dagomba, the concepts of health and illness are complex, holistic and interrelated. The Dagomba theorized that health is a discourse and a relational concept. It is also seen as being in a state of balance with the self, others, the society and the spiritual world but not the absence of illness. The paper argues that illness among Dagomba has both internal and external dimensions. It is seen as something which is part of life and growing up. Accordingly, some illnesses are innate while others come and go. Within their traditional healthcare system, language and secrecy are found to have both pragmatic and psychological functions. Language is not only used in naming illnesses and expressing other medical conditions but it is also used as a means of communication such that patients and healers engagement in the medical discourse promote good health. Secrecy is found to perform the role of patent law (intellectual property rights) to healers' traditional knowledge. It is also used to protect both patients and the potency of traditional medicine and healing. Finally the paper draws the attention of medical practitioners, especially those in the formal health systems, to the fact that cultural sensitivity and the respect for people lay theories of health and illness need to be taken seriously since that could help to promote effective healthcare delivery and reduce conflicts between patients and healthcare professionals.

This study investigates the acquisition of L2 English articles among L1 Dagbani speakers. Both Dagbani and English are article languages. However, Dagbani lacks a morphological marker for indefiniteness, hence, indefiniteness and genericity are expressed in the language by bare nouns. L2 acquisition research shows that adult L2 learners both from article and article-less languages have much difficulties mastering accurate use of articles in English. It is assumed that L2ers from article languages transfer the article semantic of their L1s while those from article-less languages fluctuate between definiteness and specificity. Eight native English speakers and 45 L1 Dagbani speakers took part in this study. All participants took three tests: a written forced-choice elicitation test, an acceptability judgement test and English proficiency test. Data was analysed using R. The results showed that English article acquisition among L1 Dagbani speakers was influenced by their L1, L2 input cues and access to UG features. The featural composition of Dagbani articles based on expressions of definiteness and genericity were found to be the relevant factors in the L2ers article choice in English. These findings are consistent with the feature reassembly and the full transfer full access hypotheses. Finally, the study also found that Dagbani L2 English learners rely on explicit learning strategies in the acquisition of English articles