"Globally, emergency services are witnessing a period of unprecedented uncertainty and change caused by pressure on their budgets, reduced manpower and changing patterns of demand and service delivery. Such challenges are also having huge implications on the workforce health and wellbeing. This book is a timely, well-researched addition to improve our understanding of the governance and collaboration issues in the emergency services."Steve McGuirk, Chairman, Warrington and Halton Hospitals Trust, Former Chief Fire Officer and CEO, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service "Good governance, collaboration and sound leadership are easy qualities to take for granted in the Emergency Services. However, given the increasing complexity of the challenging political and operational environments these organisations work in, it is not reasonable to assume these qualities will always emerge as a natural phenomenon. This book is a welcome addition that provides invaluable, evidence-based insights for leaders who are seeking to raise the quality of their services for both the public and their workforce alike."Andy Newton, Immediate Past Chair, College of Paramedics and Former Paramedic Director, South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Trust (SECAmb) This unique text provides fresh insights and understanding of the governance and collaboration issues between emergency services in a dynamic policy and organisational environment in a global world. The book offers critical insights into the theory and rationale behind the interoperability and collaboration between the emergency services and examines in detail, important themes around trust, leadership, workforce wellbeing and resilience and professional culture(s), each having great significance for the success of the interoperability and governance agenda. The chapters cover new materials, including the research conducted by the authors and are written in a style that is easily accessible. This book caters to a wide audience of researchers, academics, students, emergency services staff, leaders and public managers, both in the UK and internationally.

This text examines the impact of a crisis - big or small - and the threat of negative publicity to corporate reputation. Arguing that most companies have no crisis management plans and hope that disaster will never strike, the author of this book theorizes that consumerism, legislation, environmentalism, pressure groups and investigative media all necessitate the development of a crisis communications plan. The book shows how a crisis can be managed effectively or even turned to advantage through publicity giving the company's reputation a long term boost.;Case studies examine the activities of six companies facing crises and the lessons to be learned from their approaches. Checklists are included as a quick reference for the practising PR professional.

This text on the interaction between public health policies and social inequality probes three issues: what groups wield the greatest influence over the policy process? Who gains most from health policies? And how can we best understand the policy link between health and social inequalities? A theory of social opportunities clarifies the reasons for policy effectiveness, particularly the impact of public programmes on the environmental and personal conditions that improve people's health.

This book will provide a clear and practical guide to implementing clinical audit in practice. Divided into three parts, it introduces and contextualises what clinical audit is and how it fits in with other strategies such as evidence-based practice. The second part consists of a step-by step guide to conducting a clinical audit project in practice and part three sets out the issues which need to be considered when implementing a clinical audit programme and disseminating the results. By working through the manual, readers will be equipped to design, plan and implement a clinical audit project in order to develop patient care in line with the latest available evidence.Clearly written, practical handbook. RCN-Linked. Multi-disciplinary approach. Extensive use of case studies and exercises.Leading Authors in their field.

The shift in the care of people with serious mental illness to community-based care has been the subject of intense policy, educational and research activity, yet the provision of effective services remains problematic. This book brings together experts from a range of disciplines to provide a comprehensive and contemporary account of community services. Section I: Contemporary Issues in Community Health Care Services provides an informed and critical overview of the effect of policy framework, organizational structures, economic issues and the principles of 'good' practice in the provision of community services for people with serious mental health problems. Section II: Specific Intervention strategies summarises much of the work to date on working effectively with people who have serious mental health problems. It combines research evidence and practical illustrations of approaches and interventions with informed comment on their efficacy and implementation in routine clinical practice. Chapters include key points, case studies, questions for reflection and discussion and suggested further reading. Relevant research and evidence is cited throughout and the need for further research in this area are emphasised. All students and practitioners involved in planning, providing and evaluating services for people who have serious mental health problems will find this book an invaluable source of information for developing and delivering effective services.Leading editors and contributors Multidisciplinary perspectives, includes contributions from nurses, social workers, OTs and clinical psychologistsEvidence-based First book to provide a comprehensive and practical overview of strategies for working in this areaFocuses on practice through case-studies

Crisis management is of increasing importance to organisations. With the rise of single-issue pressure groups, the development of sophisticated and informed consumers and volatile voters, no organisation in the public or private sector can afford to neglect preparation for dealing with the disasters that may befall it. This book aims to improve the relationship between the media and those subject to media scrutiny at a time of crisis or disaster by generating mutual understanding of their needs. Drawing on the experience of practitioners, it aims to disseminate good practice. Part I sets the context and raises some general issues on the theme of communicating at a time of crisis or disaster. Part II looks at the relationships between media and those who are trying to manage the crisis in public relations and public information terms. It contains a number of case studies, each contributed by an expert, clearly explaining how a variety of crises and disasters were managed by the organisations concerned, and how they were reported by the media. Part III is an extended case study of the Hillsborough disaster, taking a candid look at what happened from the perspective of four very different people who were closely involved in the aftermath. The final section includes chapters on the value of training and rehearsal, and some of the lessons learned from Dunblane.

This book is a thorough, balanced, and insightful study of what is happening and what should be happening in health care financing. Americans want unlimited access to the best care at affordable prices. Fiscal pressures in American health care point in all different directions, like a pile of jackstraws. This important book analyzes how new payment incentives stimulate planned competition or reregulation; and the far-reaching impact these changes have on hospitals, physicians, long-term care facilities, HMOs, public health clinics, and multihospital systems. Tools for survival include better financial planning, productivity improvement, better scheduling systems, and total quality management.

Steven R. Eastaugh begins his book with a general overview of cost management, accounting, product-line selection, and new payment incentives. Part II provides an in-depth survey of fiscal trends in long-term care, managed care, HMOs, and PPOs. Part III analyzes five basic strategies that a provider may consider; with special focus on market analysis, diversification, and pricing. The next part reviews physician payment options, the new Medicare 1992 payment systems for hospitals and physicians, and cost analysis of hospital patient care, research, and education. Part V considers productivity enhancement methods, incentives to assist productivity programs, and the Deming method of total quality management. Part VI focuses on investment, financing, and capital structure decisions in health care institutions and also in large multifacility systems. The last part summarizes major strategies for success in the 1990s, future policy alternatives, and suggests a number of alternative roads to universal entitlement and national health care reform. As Eastaugh suggests in this book, Our health system faces . . . immense opportunity and danger in a reformation on four fronts: access, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of life. The challenge for providers and managers during this period of unparalleled opportunity is to win a clear victory on all four fronts, and not erode either access or quality in the name of efficiency. The range of coverage in Health Care Finance is extremely wide and detailed--making it essential and useful reading for health care professionals and students alike.

This volume presents the results of research which represent a significant contribution to the knowledge of equity in the finance and delivery of health care in ten countries. It compares the experience of nine European countries and the US using a consistent methodology to draw out comparable results from ten very different health care systems. Such an approach facilitates not only a greater understanding of the performance of the health care systems of other countries but also the identification of the lessons that can be learnt from international comparisons. In recent years it has been recognized that many health and health care problems are similar across many countries and their solution can be usefuly informed by the abandonment both of isolation and the belief that an individual country's problems are unique. The contents of this book demonstrate that given efficient research teams, research funding can produce both significant new knowledge of direct relevance to the reform of health care systems world-wide, and also collaborative, mutually informative work between Europeans and others living outside the EEC.

Recent flood events in Europe, the USA and elsewhere have shown the devastating impact that flooding can have on people and property. Flood warning and forecasting systems provide a well-established way to help to reduce the effects of flooding by allowing people to be evacuated from areas at risk, and for measures to be taken to reduce damage to property. With sufficient warning, temporary defences (sandbags, flood gates etc) can also be installed, and river control structures operated to mitigate the effects of flooding.

Many countries and local authorities now operate some form of flood warning system, and the underlying technology requires knowledge across a range of technical areas, including rainfall and tidal detection systems, river and coastal flood forecasting models, flood warning dissemination systems, and emergency response procedures.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the flood forecasting, warning and emergency response process, including techniques for predicting the development of flood events, and for issuing appropriate warnings. Related topics, such as telemetry and information systems, and flood warning economics, are also discussed. For perhaps the first time, this book brings together in a single volume the many strands of this interesting multidisciplinary topic, and will serve as a reference for researchers, policy makers and engineers. The material on meteorological, hydrological and coastal modelling and monitoring may also be of interest to a wider audience.

Properly addressing a crisis requires more than just guesswork and a reaction; it requires a properly structured approach supported by good information. With the rapid evolution of information systems and information technology, including hardware, software, the internet, and communications capabilities, there are abundant opportunities to apply these technology capabilities and resources to support and improve responses to and management of crisis situations. Approaches to crisis response and management include the design, development, implementation, and application of systematic methodologies on how to respond, as well as how to apply information systems to enhance and extend responses to crises. Information Technology Applications for Crisis Response and Management provides a multi-disciplinary perspective on current and cutting-edge research exploring and extending our understanding of the use of information systems and information technology to support responses to crises of all kindsOCoeaccidental, intentional, and acts of nature. The chapters in this book focus on the design, development, implementation, use, and evaluation of information system technologies and methodologies to support crisis response and management, as well as technology management-related issues for crisis response and management. While highlighting technical, cognitive, organizational, and human-focused issues within the field, this book is ideal for policymakers, IT specialists, government officials, crisis response teams, managers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the use of information technology and information systems to support diverse types of crises.

Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World, Third Edition provides valuable information for navigating these priorities in the age of evolving media. The emergence of new media like the Internet, email, blogs, text messaging, cell phone photos, and the increasing influence of first informers are redefining the roles of government and media. The tools and rules of communications are evolving, and disaster communications must also evolve to accommodate these changes and exploit the opportunities they provide. This book illuminates the path to effective disaster communication, including the need for transparency, increased accessibility, trustworthiness and reliability, and partnerships with the media.

This book brings together a variety of the best papers from an international research symposium on organisational behaviour in healthcare. It includes contributions from key names such as Sandra Dawson and Peter Spurgeon with a foreword by Rosemary Stewart. Also including chapters from Australia, Canada and Europe, it is consciously international in perspective and aims to relate the public sector agenda as a comparator for developments in the US.

Critical incidents all too often explode onto the social conscious and challenge our sense of security. This comprehensive handbook brings together a range of experts who provide a foundation for the field of critical incident analysis by examining specific incidents9/11, the Virginia Tech massacre, the H1N1 pandemic, the BP oil spill, and more--through various methodological and disciplinary lenses.

The American State Normal School is the first comprehensive history of the state normal schools in the United States. Although nearly two-hundred state colleges and regional universities throughout the U.S. began as 'normal' schools, the institutions themselves have buried their history, and scholars have largely overlooked them. As these institutions later became state colleges and/or regional universities, they distanced themselves from the low status of elementary-literally erasing physical evidence of their normal-school past. In doing so, they buried the rich history of generations of students for whom attending normal school was an enriching, and sometimes life-changing experience. Focusing on these students, the first wave of 'non-traditional' students in higher education, The American State Normal School is a much-needed re-examination of the state normal school.This book was subject of an annual History of Education Society panel for best new books in the field.

This volume explores issues connected with quality, planning of services and access concerns especially as linked with providers of care, health care institutions, and patients. Changes have continued to occur within the field but have been led by overall marketplace trends. Papers in this volume are presented in four parts covering changing models of health care. In Part I topics come from a broad perspective to include: development of newer models of care, more traditional areas such as the medical profession and the patient or the hospital and the patient, the changes that alternative medicine brings to issues of quality of care and access and planning, and of citizen participation in health planning. Part II deals with federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and access and quality issues within those programs. Part III covers the challenges of planning for long-term care needs and services. And Part IV explores other aspects of the changing health care delivery system: changes in nursing, midwifery, and rural health care and provides linkages to quality, access, and planning issues. This excellent work helps the reader to think more carefully and more creatively about issues of quality of care, access to care, and planning for services.

Disaster management is generally understood to consist of four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. While these phases are all important and interrelated, response and recovery are often considered to be the most critical in terms of saving lives. Response is the acute phase occurring after the event, and includes all arrangements to remove detriments and a long-term inventory of supplies to deal with irreversible damage. The timely provision of geospatial information is crucial in the decision-making process, and can save lives and rescue citizens. The aim of this volume is to share technological advances that allow wider, faster and more effective utilization of geospatial information in emergency response situations. The volume describes current accomplishments and challenges in providing geospatial information with these attributes, and is organized in six parts: - Practice and legislation, with a focus on the utilization of geospatial information in recent disaster events, as well as resulting legislative attempts to share and access data. - Data collection and data products. - Data management and routing in 3D. - Emerging technologies, including positioning, virtual reality and simulation models. - Integration of heterogeneous data. - Applications and solutions. This volume is aimed at researchers, practitioners and students who work in the variety of disciplines related to geospatial information technology for emergency response, and represents the very best of current thinking from a number of pioneering studies over the past four years.

Health care in the United States at the end of the 20th century occupies a completely different place in the economy, in the public consciousness, and in its impact on government, than it did at the beginning of the century, or even in the early years of the Clinton Administration. Health care is now a multi-billion dollar industry; one that consumes more than 15 percent of the nation's GNP. Citizens now regard health care as essential to the quality of their lives, and a steady stream of new medications and procedures point to ways to extend the lives of our aging population and restore those injured on or off the job. At the same time, the changing patterns of health care have stirred a national debate over the growth of managed care and the role that government can play in providing solid health care standards--a medical safety net--within tightening budgetary restraints. This book explores the role of the federal government in health care policy development from the years of the Founding Fathers to the present.

Kronenfeld reviews the key features of the American health care system, its infrastructure, and federal legislative process and outcomes in the health care arena. The current situation in health care is examined, with particular attention given to the attempt at major reform in the first Clinton administration, and to the modest changes that were ultimately passed. She closes with an examination of the future of health care and the role of government, emphasizing how current health care issues and concerns may set the stage for a changed federal role in funding and delivery of health care services in the next century. This comprehensive examination of the role of government in the health care system will be of great interest to students and researchers of public policy and the social aspects of American health care.

The contemporary world is characterized by the massive use of digital communication platforms and services that allow people to stay in touch with each other and their organizations. On the other hand, it is also a world with great challenges in terms of crisis, disaster, and emergency situations of various kinds. Thus, it is crucial to understand the role of digital platforms/services in the context of crisis, disaster, and emergency situations. The Handbook of Research on Digital Services in Crisis, Disaster, and Emergency Situations presents recent studies on crisis, disaster, and emergency situations in which digital technologies are considered as a key mediator. Featuring multi- and interdisciplinary research findings, this comprehensive reference work highlights the relevance of society's digitization and its usefulness and contribution to the different phases and types of risk scenarios. Thus, the book investigates the design of digital services that are specifically developed for use in crisis situations and examines services such as online social networks that can be used for communication purposes in emergency events. Highlighting themes that include crisis management communication, risk monitoring, digital crisis intervention, and smartphone applications, this book is of particular use to governments, institutions, corporations, and professionals who deal with crisis, disaster, and emergency scenarios, as well as researchers, academicians, and students working in fields such as communications, multimedia, sociology, political science, and engineering.

Review of previous edition:
"Trevor Kletz's book makes an invaluable contribution to the systematic, professional and scientific approach to accident investigation." The Chemical Engineer

Fully revised and updated, the third edition of Learning from Accidents provides more information on accident investigation, including coverage of accidents involving liquefied gases, building collapse and other incidents that have occurred because faults were invisible (e.g. underground pipelines).
By analysing accidents that have occurred Trevor Kletz shows how we can learn and thus be better able to prevent accidents happening again. Looking at a wide range of incidents, covering the process industries, nuclear industry and transportation, he analyses each accident in a practical and non-theoretical fashion and summarises each with a chain of events showing the prevention and mitigation which could have occurred at every stage.
At all times Learning from Accidents, 3rd Edition emphasises cause and prevention rather than human interest or cleaning up the mess. Anyone involved in accident investigation and reporting of whatever sort and all those who work in industry, whether in design, operations or loss prevention will find this book full of invaluable guidance and advice.
Completely up-dated.
Shows, by analysing accidents that have occurred, how we can learn from them, and prevent the same accidents happening again.

In 1984 Congress revamped Medicare to save a financially distraught health care system, thus transforming the hospital as an organization. Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) -- the cornerstone of this extensive reorganization -- have triggered repercussions that are still adversely affecting health care professionals. This volume cuts to the heart of this crisis, examining the difficulties and foibles of going from DRG Legislation to DRG practices and giving voice to the professionals who must carve out a new reality under DRGs. It exposes the disputes between the various professional groups -- administrators, physicians, and nurses --over the implementation of DRGS, and how these professionals maneuver to manage the health service problems created by the policy. The book's authors provide an insightful analysis of the way policy innovations can wreak havoc on an organization and how professionals working together eventually negotiate order out of the chaos of change. The volume's narrative style of research is one feature that makes the presentation of the authors' findings unique from other works on Medicare legislation. Additionally, the book offers a case study approach to communication and sociological matters of a significant health care issue.