Clinical directorate service structures (CDs) have been widely implemented in acute settings in the belief that they will enhance efficiency and patient care by bringing teams together and involving clinicians in management. We argue that the achievement of such goals depends not only on...

Scott hypothesised that there are national differences in the theories held by health professionals regarding rehabilitation. Thus they have different perceptions of and reactions to patient behaviours. This was tested by comparing the reactions of female physiotherapists, occupational...

Patients (N = 126) interviewed during hospitalization at the onset of chronic illness were found to be experiencing considerable emotional arousal. Their psychological reactions were assessed by applying content analysis scales to accounts of their current experiences and comparing these with...

Health practitioners (N = 665) from the Chinese, Italian, German, Greek, Arabic and Anglo Australian communities used social distance scales to rate the attitudes of people in their communities toward 20 disability groups. Significant differences were found in community attitudes toward people...

Participatory action research is lauded for its emancipatory potential and practice relevance. Little research has focused on the ethical and political dimensions of power relations between management gatekeepers and staff in large organizations in the negotiation of action research. To...

This paper examines the relationship between clinical quality and organizational efficiency in emergency departments (EDs). Previous studies have often emphasized the incompatibility of quality and efficiency, or have neglected to account for their inter-relationships. Policy perspectives...

Increasingly questions are being raised about the ability of many current health reforms to address the challenges that are facing health systems. We investigate this situation by exploring the role of professionalism in the delivery of health services. In contrast to the dominant approach of...

In this paper, we discuss how a technique borrowed from defense and manufacturing is being deployed in hospitals across the industrialized world to investigate clinical errors. We open with a discussion of the levers used by policy makers to mandate that clinicians not just report errors, but...

This paper explores the relevance of a specific kind of sensed connectedness or 'teleo-affectivity' to the organisation and enactment of end-of-life care. Referred to as heedful inter-relating, this teleo-affective connectedness has been found to occur among employees as they carry out their...

Emergency clinicians undertake boundary-work as they facilitate patient trajectories through the Emergency Department (ED). Emergency clinicians must manage the constantly-changing dynamics at the boundaries of the ED and other hospital departments and organizations whose services emergency...