Maintaining distance and staying immersed: practical ethics in an underresourced new born unit

The Health Services that Deliver for Newborns (HSD-N) project is supported by a multidisciplinary team with experience in ethnographic work, epidemiology, and health systems. The project aims to investigate the projected need for neonatal inpatient services; what existing infrastructure and human resource capacity is available supporting access for this population; utilization of these services; and the quality of existing nursing care services. The latter aim is supported by an ethnography of neonatal nursing. This research was undertaken at three of Nairobi’s NBUs over a period of 18 months, beginning early in 2015. Two of the three researchers were based in Kenya, while one was primarily based in the United Kingdom. All three researchers are social scientists, they were involved in the data collection, and all research was coordinated through the KEMRI-Wellcome offices in Nairobi.