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Books > Health, Home & Family > General
This edited volume of original chapters brings together researchers from around the world who are exploring the facets of health care organization and delivery that are sometimes marginal to mainstream patient safety theories and methodologies but offer important insights into the socio-cultural and organizational context of patient safety. By examining these critical insights or perspectives and drawing upon theories and methodologies often neglected by mainstream safety researchers, this collection shows we can learn more about not only the barriers and drivers to implementing patient safety programmes, but also about the more fundamental issues that shape notions of safety, alternate strategies for enhancing safety, and the wider implications of the safety agenda on the future of health care delivery. In so doing, A Socio-cultural Perspective on Patient Safety challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions around fundamental philosophical and political issues upon which mainstream orthodoxy relies. The book draws upon a range of theoretical and empirical approaches from across the social sciences to investigate and question the patient safety movement. Each chapter takes as its focus and question a particular aspect of the patient safety reforms, from its policy context and theoretical foundations to its practical application and manifestation in clinical practice, whilst also considering the wider implications for the organization and delivery of health care services. Accordingly, the chapters each draw upon a distinct theoretical or methodological approach to critically explore specific dimensions of the patient safety agenda. Taken as a whole, the collection advances a strong, coherent argument that is much needed to counter some of the uncritical assumptions that need to be described and analyzed if patient safety is indeed to be achieved.
Why should researchers be interested in their feelings and emotions as they carry out research? Emotion is what it is to exist, to be human, and is present in every sphere of our lives. All activities are infused with emotion, even those that are constructed as 'rational', because rationality and emotionality are interpenetrated and entwined because all thinking is tinged with feeling, and all feeling is tinged with thinking. This book illuminates the emotional processes of doing social and organizational research, and the implications of this for the outcomes of research. With contributions from leading academics and research practitioners, it addresses the significant issue of the sometimes intense emotional experiences involved in doing research and the implications it has for the theory and practice of social research. By examining the nature of feelings and emotions, it explores how we might understand researchers' emotions and experiences, and considers the often powerful feelings encountered in a variety of research contexts. Topics discussed include: power relations; psycho-social explanations of researcher emotions; paradoxical relations with research participants and the sometimes disturbing data that is gained; research supervision; the politics of research; gender; publishing, undergoing vivas and presenting at conferences. This book will therefore be a valuable companion to researchers and research students from the start of their career onwards.
Social inclusion/exclusion has only recently emerged in transport-related discourse. Despite the apparent absence of a transport policy framework for social inclusion/exclusion, there has been some movement towards a greater understanding of the social aspects of transport in the research sphere. This book brings together some of this research, focusing on ethnicity - an area that has, so far, had little discussion in the traditional transport literature, thereby contributing to the exploration of the interface between transport and social exclusion. In particular, it examines the contribution that demand management measures can make to the reduction of the negative impacts of road-based transport. It questions whether methods such as road user charging and work place parking can be used as instruments for social inclusion, and analyses the potential negative impacts of these schemes if sufficient attention is not paid to ethnicity issues.
Despite the fact that the rural commuter belts of cities are major loci of population change, economic growth and dynamic social change within city regions, most research tends to ignore this area while focusing on the built-up city core. However, with the current emphasis on the role of rural areas in policy debates, it is vital to recognize the importance of the 'commuter belt'. By comparing four major European cities (in England, France, Germany and Spain), this book offers the first comparative investigation of the dynamism of city rural hinterlands. It assesses whether rural areas will become effectively integrated into quality of life improvements as a result of their inter-dependencies with cities, focusing on the critical arenas of employment change, housing and service provision. In doing so, it investigates how change in these three fields impact on the quality of life and physical environment of rural hinterlands.
Responding to the public concern caused by recent hospital scandals and accounts of unintended harm to patients, this author draws on her experience of analysing the health care systems of over a dozen countries and examines whether greater regulation has increased patient safety and health care quality. The book adopts a new approach to mapping developments in health care systems in Europe, North America and Australia and pieces together evidence of which regulatory strategies and mechanisms work well to ensure safer patient care. It identifies the regulatory bodies, the regulatory principles and the implementation strategies adopted to improve governance in health care systems and suggests a conceptual framework for responsive regulation. The book will be of interest to government actors, health care professionals and medico-legal scholars.
In recent decades, the responsibility for initiating regeneration programmes has been placed firmly in the hands of rural communities, with the rationale being that local people are best placed to know their own problems and, consequently, to develop their own solutions. Despite the popularity of this approach, the self-help approach has its own problems and can be seen as an attempt by governments to reduce public spending. This book provides a critical account of the discourses and practices of self-help in contemporary rural development policies of Australia and other western nations. Although it examines the problems of the self-help approach, it moves beyond a straightforward exposition of the impediments to self-help. Instead, taking a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, it puts forward a theoretical analysis of the self-help concept, assessing it as a means of governing rural development in an advanced liberal manner. It argues that self-help should not be regarded as either the empowerment or the abandonment of rural citizens by a shrinking state, but rather the application of new ways of thinking about and acting upon rural development.
Optimizing Learning Outcomes provides answers for the most pressing questions that mental health professionals, teachers, and administrators are facing in today's schools. Chapters provide a wide array of evidence-based resources-including links to video segments-that promote understanding, discussion, and successful modeling. Accessible how-to trainings provide readers with multiple sensory-based practices that improve academic success and promote behavioral regulation. Clinicians and educators will come away from this book with a variety of tools for facilitating brain-based, trauma-sensitive learning for all, realizing improved learning outcomes, improving teacher satisfaction, and reducing disciplinary actions and suspensions.
Ethics in Hospice Care: Challenges to Hospice Values in a Changing Health Care Environment explores the pressures and challenges facing hospice and aims to produce new studies and educational materials on hospice ethics to help professionals in the field. Many of the tensions felt by caregivers and practitioners in hospice stem from uncertainty about the ethical mission of hospice and the ethical dilemmas arising in practice. This volume, a result of The Hastings Center and the Hospice Foundation of America's project on Ethical and Policy Issues in Hospice Care, addresses these issues in a clear, accessible way.Ethics in Hospice Care outlines the economic, social, and cultural challenges facing hospice care in a changing society and a changing health care environment. Issues of concern include: financial pressures as policymakers limit Medicare spending organizational pressures as hospice organizations enter a variety of new relationships with managed care organizations, home health agencies, and hospitals cultural and social challenges as Americans wrestle with moral and legal issues of death and dying and physician-assisted suicide the rapid and unplanned growth of the movement--from a single hospice in 1973 to over 2500 todayWhile primarily for practicing hospice professionals, Ethics in Hospice Care is vital reading for everyone concerned with assisted suicide, patients'rights, quality of life, managed care, physician referral, professional development, pain management, quality of care, and ethics committees.
This book introduces critical mapping as a problem-focused design approach for analyzing systemic societal problems like food, to scope out existing solutions, and find opportunities for sustainable design intervention. This book puts forth a framework entitled 'wicked solutions' that can be applied to determine issues that designers should address to make real differences in the world and yield sustainable change. The book assesses the current role of design in attaining food security in a sustainable, equitable, and just manner. Accomplishing this goal is not simple, if it was, it would not be called a wicked problem. But this book shows how a particular repertoire of design tools can be deployed to find solutions and strategize the development of novel outcomes within a complex and interconnected terrain. To address the wicked problem of food insecurity, inequity, and injustice, this book highlights seventy three peer-reviewed design outcomes that epitomize sustainable food design. This includes local and regional sustainable design outcomes funded or supported by public or private institutions and local and widespread design outcomes created by citizens. In doing so, this book sets the stage for an evidence-driven and -informed design future that facilitates the designers' visualization of wicked solutions to complex social problems, such as food insecurity. Drawing on an array of case studies from across the world, from urban rooftop farms and community cookers to mobile apps and food design cards, this book provides vitally important information about existing sustainable food design outcomes in a way that is organized, accessible, and informative. This book will be of great interest to academics and professionals working in the field of design and sustainable food systems. Students interested in learning about food and sustainability from across design studies, food studies, innovation and entrepreneurship, urban studies and global development will also find this book of great use.
Offering resources and initiatives on religious and spiritual diversity in higher education, this book describes the conceptual foundations for teaching religious literacy and provides a sample curriculum with a facilitator's guide and assessment tools needed to evaluate its development among students. With a clear understanding of the diversity of religious and spiritual experiences found on college and university campuses, Ennis offers a much-needed framework for facilitating conversations about religion and spirituality in colleges and universities. By working from a comprehensive overview of NYU's award-winning Faith Zone training program, this book breaks down the methodology and tools required to create religious literacy training curricula at campuses around the world.
The topic of death and related issues (such as grief) often begin with questions. When the questions come from, or are about, children or adolescents, they bring an additional component...the fear some adults have of giving a "wrong" answer. In this context a wrong answer is one that can cause more harm than good for the child or adolescent who asked the question. This book provides information that can be used to address the death-related questions from children and adolescents. It also looks at questions from caring adults about the way children or adolescents view death and the grief that follows a death or any major loss. Children, Adolescents, and Death covers topics that start with early studies of childhood grief and progress to expression of grief in cyberspace. There is no one answer to most of the questions in this book. There are contributors from a number of continents, countries, cultures, and academic disciplines, each of whom brings a unique view of the topic issues they discuss. There are presentations of practical interventions that others may copy, upon which they can build. There are a number of chapters that look at death education in both family and school settings. This work contains ideas and techniques that can be of value to parents, educators, counselors, therapists, spiritual advisors, caring adults and, of course, will be of the most benefit to those who ask the most questions...the children and adolescents themselves.
1. Provides cutting edge GIS visualization, spatial temporal pattern, and hot spot tracking applications used for predictive modeling of COVID-19. 2. Includes real world case studies with broad geographic scope that reflect COVID-19 trends in cases, deaths, and vaccinations. 3. Provides lifestyle segmentation analysis on the risk of transmission of COVID-19 and spatial patterns of vaccination hesitancy 4. Highlights real world issues brought to light with the help of GIS, such as social discrimination, inequalities in women’s access to mental health care, and analyzes the risk of transmission due to vaccination hesitancy. 5. Shows the use of GIS and spatial analysis at pandemic mapping, management, and control from masking and social distancing to testing site locations accounting for at-risk and vulnerable populations. 6. Discusses facilitating policy making with GIS.
This book investigates the scientific basis and efficacy of acupuncture and the quality of training and standards of competence in its practitioners. Patients are increasingly asking about CAM alternatives to orthodox medical practices as they fear the side-effects of ever more potent traditional drug therapy. The book discusses the important issues of safety and the education and training of acupuncture specialists. In addition the book investigates GP's attitudes to acupunture and the extent to which they offer the treatment to their patients.
Adaptable Interventions for Counseling Concerns is filled with more than 40 interventions appropriate for new and experienced professionals alike. The interventions are organized in a unique yet practical manner, including options for individual reader creativity and personal adaptations within the text itself. The book's uniqueness lies in the broad coverage of common concerns, formatting, and ease in navigation. Each chapter is devoted to a specific client concern, with seven suggested intervention strategies clearly labeled by modality to make it easy for readers to find new interventions best suited to their practice. Chapters also introduce relevant and recent research on client concerns, contextualizing the circumstances for which a counseling professional could apply the chosen interventions. Intervention sections also include space for individualized notes and reader personalization.
Those new to research often end up 'making a meal of it' because it can be tricky to know exactly where to begin. But it doesn't have to be so daunting. This workbook has been designed mostly for those going into postgraduate study, but it can also be used by anyone looking to start their journey into research. It will help you better understand what research is, how to do it (with activities to help you think about this in the context of your own research) and where you might start looking in the vast ocean of resources out there.
Normalisation, the theoretical framework that underpins the movement of services for people with disabilities from long stay hospitals, has recently become the focus of much academic and professional attention. As the community care debate has moved into the public arena, it has attracted a certain amount of criticism, acknowledging the political and philosophical conflicts that surround it. Normalisation: A Reader for the Nineties provides a much needed, informed appraisal of this controversial practice and combines various perspectives on the subject, including applied behavioural analysis, social policy and psychodynamic approaches. Thus it explores the discrepancies between the ideal and the reality and extends the debate by drawing comparisons, with other political and social ideologies.
Counselling Ideologies draws our attention to the dilemmas inherent within the therapeutic ideologies commonly subscribed to by psychotherapists and counsellors working with those who challenge heteronormative models and approaches. Identifying the modernist, heteronormative understandings of the world implicit in the more popular models, this book employs queer theory to challenge these ideologies, drawing on disciplines both within and outside of counselling and psychology, as well as sociology, cultural studies and various ethnographic accounts. It highlights the dilemmas faced by those who may wish to practise as 'queer therapists', addressing not only therapeutic dilemmas, but also issues such as: identity, race, coming-out experiences, 'internalised homophobia', 'empathy', 'ethical issues', bisexuality and pathologisation. Comprising contributions from both academic experts and practitioners from the UK, USA and Australia, this book represents a new approach to counselling and psychotherapy that will appeal not only to sociologists and those working in the field of mental health, but also to scholars of race and ethnicity, gender, queer studies and queer theory.
With contributions by recognised experts in the field of education law, this book is a comparative study of the resolution of special education disputes, including via mediation. It analyses the varying approaches in England, Scotland, the US and the Netherlands and addresses major questions of dispute resolution, redress, judicial and non-judicial approaches and the protection of citizens' rights. The first review of mediation in citizen v. state disputes outside the context of the courts, this topical book also incorporates findings from a recent ESRC study into dispute resolution in special educational needs cases. It will not only be of interest to those concerned with education issues but also those interested in administrative justice, especially the role of mediation generally
The vast majority of academic texts on motherhood have focused on women's experiences of the early years of mothering, while texts covering the topic of home-leaving have tended to privilege the young person's experience. Combining lively empirical material with an illuminating social-theoretical framework, Trish Green's book addresses the much neglected area of the mother's experience of separation from her child at the time of their home-leaving. The book makes clear how the mother's experience of separation is silenced, first by the socio-cultural constructions of motherhood per se, second by the privileging of the child's transition to adulthood, and third by a neglect of the relational dimension of this particular life-course transition. In doing so the book makes an important contribution to debates on ageing, identity and the life-course, and will be of great interest to sociologists with various academic interests.
Divorce has become a form of family change in contemporary western societies, spawning much research to investigate its causes and consequences. Such research has promoted a sociological understanding of divorce, impact on families and individuals as well as implications for public policy. However, research in this domain has been largely restricted to white populations in western contexts as well as adhering to quantitative research methodologies. There is little understanding of the dynamics of minority ethnic families, sometimes resulting in false assumptions and over-generalizations about family structures, stability and transitions in these communities. The impact of this gap in knowledge leads to perspective blocks in terms of how minority ethnic families are conceived in the public sphere as well as in academia. Similar to other minority ethnic groups, there is little literature on divorce in South-Asian families. Though traditionally divorce rates within South-Asian communities were low, there is now an upward trend. This is the first book to analyze the experiences of British-Indian adult children of divorce and contextualize their experiences within the larger multi-cultural polity of the UK. It also discusses the value and implications of understanding the divorce phenomenon and how it is experienced within this community to present insights into what multi-cultural social work and knowledge can mean. This can also enhance support provision for all children and enable better coping of family transitions by acknowledging their specific contexts and needs.
Does the state still frame debates about new technology? Can policy-makers ensure the benefits of health developments through genomics while still satisfying the expectations of society and the economic imperatives? In this critique of the new governance agenda for research and innovation in life sciences, the authors discuss the world-wide policy decisions needed, with particular reference to genomics. They suggest the many facets of policy and could be treated as a government-governance continuum, where different aspects of genomics may sit at different points, and co-exist. Their findings offer valuable insights for the future and will help promote a global solution to this problem.
Health care is constantly undergoing change and refinement resulting from the adoption of new practices and technologies, the changing nature of societies and populations, and also shifts in the very places from which care is delivered. Primary Health Care: People, Practice, Place draws together significant contributions from established experts across a variety of disciplines to focus on such changes in primary health care, not only because it is the most basic and integral form of health service delivery, but also because it is an area to which geographers have made significant contributions and to which other scholars have engaged in 'thinking geographically' about its core concepts and issues. Including perspectives from both consumers and producers, it moves beyond geographical accounts of the context of health service provision through its explicit focus on the practice of primary health care. With arguments well-supported by empirical research, this book will appeal not only to scholars across a range of social and health sciences, but also to professionals involved in health services.
By combining focus groups and interviews with innovative research techniques, such as web-based discussions and Q methodology, this book provides insights into the daily experiences of those using the British transport system. Despite an entitlement to a basic level of mobility, travel decision-making can be more complex for members of marginalised groups - this book therefore examines the complexities of travel amongst different social groups. The complex nature of travel for different social groups is the starting point for this book's investigation of the experiences of the extremely socially marginalized, compared to those who are fully included. By comparing the impacts of transport on individuals at different points on a scale of social inclusion/exclusion, the book reveals the nuanced and textured ways in which transport is embedded in people's lives and lifestyles. By analysing people's lived experience of transport, rather than focussing on economic or engineering factors, the book provides useful new insights into future transport needs. It makes a compelling case that transport-related social exclusion has been neglected by local and regional policy makers and puts forward suggestions for best case practice for the future.
Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare argues that traditional modes of bioethics are proving incommensurable with burgeoning biotechnologies and consequently, emerging subjectivities. Drawn from diverse disciplines, this volume works toward a new mode of discourse in bioethics, offering a critique of the current norms and constraints under which Western healthcare operates. The contributions imagine new, less paternalistic, terms by which bioethics might proceed - terms that do not resort to exclusively Western models of liberal humanism or to the logic of neoliberal economies. It is argued that in this way, we can begin to develop an ethical vocabulary that does justice to the challenges of our age. Bringing together theorists, practitioners and clinicians to present a wide variety of related disciplinary concerns and perspectives on bioethics, this volume challenges the underlying assumptions that continue to hold sway in the ethics of medicine and health sciences.
This volume explores the nature of health and health-care experiences in Russia by comparing societies and communities with different socio-cultural conditions. The unique use of longitudinal data collected over ten years, allows the authors to address key questions on Russians individual experiences of health care and their understanding of its influencing factors. They explore the methods of self treatment and illness prevention in combination with the effects poverty and treatment availability can have on the standards of living for the people surveyed. This pertinent issue follows a time of rapidly worsening health status amongst the Russian population and a grave decline in male life expectancy. The findings are set within the context of experience from Finland and the UK, allowing the authors to explore the challenge of the Russian health-care crisis to Western European models of health status and health care. |
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