Paul Dugdale argues that Australia's health policy scene is in rude health, with regular debates about major reform and a steady stream of minor reforms. What motivates these debates and reforms? How can nine governments, and scores of professional associations, charities and businesses interact effectively without a master plan? Why are some health policy changes met with widespread enthusiasm and others enormous resistance?Dugdale traces the history of the economic and social forces which have shaped Australia's health system. He examines the thinking of government as it is expressed through contemporary health policy, and the roles of the key players including hospitals, the medical profession and health departments. He also discusses major current concerns including Indigenous health, health finance, the medical labour market, health protection and safety issues.With its insider's perspective on the health system and policy debates, Doing Health Policy in Australia is essential reading for health professionals working in management and policy roles.Paul Dugdale's account of health policy in Australia is engaging, philosophical, reflective and socially informed. - Professor Stephen Leeder, University of SydneyA distinctive addition to the pantheon of Australian books on health policy, weaving together social theory, history and philosophy with reflective commentaries on the Australian health system and health policy, and on being an activist within the policy-making world. It challenges convention and standard expectations. - Professor Vivian Lin, La Trobe University

Healthcare organizations depend on managers to build effective peer relationships to manage complex patient needs. Today, top management is fighting the many headed monster Hydra from Greek Mythology. The organization is steeped in conflict between peers. But, as soon as one problem is resolved, two more have grown in its place. These appear to be personal conflicts, but instead follow patterns of dysfunction. This book provides the conceptual frameworks for identifying these and for developing peer to peer relationship competence in the healthcare organization.

Despite blockchain being an emerging technology that is mainly applied in the financial and logistics domain areas, it has great potential to be applied in other industries to generate a wider impact. Due to the need for social distancing globally, blockchain has great opportunities to be adopted in digital health including health insurance, pharmaceutical supply chain, remote diagnosis, and more. Revolutionizing Digital Healthcare Through Blockchain Technology Applications explores the current applications and future opportunities of blockchain technology in digital health and provides a reference for the development of blockchain in digital health for the future. Covering key topics such as privacy, blockchain economy, and cryptocurrency, this reference work is ideal for computer scientists, healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

This book presents the problem of attempted suicide as a meaningful and momentous event in the person's life with special consideration of its effects on the human environment. Five groups of people who have made suicide attempts were studied.

This book presents statistical processes for health care delivery and covers new ideas, methods and technologies used to improve health care organizations. It gathers the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Care Systems Engineering (HCSE 2017), which took place in Florence, Italy from May 29 to 31, 2017. The Conference provided a timely opportunity to address operations research and operations management issues in health care delivery systems. Scientists and practitioners discussed new ideas, methods and technologies for improving the operations of health care systems, developed in close collaborations with clinicians. The topics cover a broad spectrum of concrete problems that pose challenges for researchers and practitioners alike: hospital drug logistics, operating theatre management, home care services, modeling, simulation, process mining and data mining in patient care and health care organizations.

This book extends the critical scope of the previous volume, De-Medicalizing Misery, into a wider social and political context, developing the critique of the psychiatrization of Western society. It explores the contemporary mental health landscape and poses possible alternative solutions to the continuing issues of emotional distress.

This publication identifies and discusses important challenges affecting eHealth in the EU and North America in the three areas of law, ethics and governance. It makes meaningful contributions to the eHealth discourse by suggesting solutions and making recommendations for good practice and potential ways forward. Legal challenges discussed include issues related to electronic medical records, telemedicine, the Internet and pharmaceutical drugs, healthcare information systems and medical liability. Ethical challenges focus on telehealth and service delivery in the home, Web 2.0 and the Internet, patient perceptions and ethical frameworks. Governance challenges focus on IT governance in healthcare, governance and decision-making in acute care hospitals, and different models of eHealth governance. The publication provides useful support materials and readings for persons active in developing current understandings of the legal, ethical and governance challenges involved in the eHealth context.

Each day, new applications and methods are developed for utilizing technology in the field of medical sciences, both as diagnostic tools and as methods for patients to access their medical information through their personal gadgets. However, the maximum potential for the application of new technologies within the medical field has not yet been realized. Mobile Devices and Smart Gadgets in Medical Sciences is a pivotal reference source that explores different mobile applications, tools, software, and smart gadgets and their applications within the field of healthcare. Covering a wide range of topics such as artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and oncology, this book is ideally designed for medical practitioners, mobile application developers, technology developers, software experts, computer engineers, programmers, ICT innovators, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

Public Health Behind Bars From Prisons to Communities examines the burden of illness in the growing prison population, and analyzes the impact on public health as prisoners are released. This book makes a timely case for correctional health care that is humane for those incarcerated and beneficial to the communities they reenter.

The internet, smartphones, computer self-help programmes and other technological advances are the new frontiers of suicide prevention, with organisations around the world rapidly expanding these services. Suicide Prevention and New Technologies responds to an increasing need by organisations, planners, researchers and individuals working in suicide prevention and mental health to better understand how they can and should become involved in suicide prevention using these new technologies. Each chapter is written by experts in the field and presents the current state of the art in the light of research findings and discuss current and future challenges.

Despite emancipation from the evils of enslavement in 1838, most people of African origin in the British West Indian colonies continued to suffer serious material deprivation and racial oppression. This book examines the management and treatment of those who became insane, in the period until the Great War.

This book uses an economic framework to examine the consequences of U.S. farm and food policies for obesity, its social costs, and the implications for government policy. Drawing on evidence from economics, public health, nutrition, and medicine, the authors evaluate past and potential future roles of policies such as farm subsidies, public agricultural R&D, food assistance programs, taxes on particular foods (such as sodas) or nutrients (such as fat), food labeling laws, and advertising controls. The findings are mostly negative-it is generally not economic to use farm and food policies as obesity policy-but some food policies that combine incentives and information have potential to make a worthwhile impact. This book is accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students across the sciences and social sciences, as well as to decision-makers in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. Winner of the Quality of Research Discovery Award from the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

This book aims to identify, understand and qualify barriers to the patient-centred knowledge sharing (KS) in interprofessional practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) healthcare professionals in Chinese hospitals. This collaboration is particularly crucial and unique to China since, contrary to Western practice, these two types of professionals actually work together complimentary in the same hospital. This study adopted a Grounded Theory approach as the overarching methodology to guide the analysis of the data collected in a single case-study design. A public hospital in central China was selected as the case-study site, at which 49 informants were interviewed by using semi-structured and evolving interview scripts. The research findings point to five categories of KS barriers: contextual influences, hospital management, philosophical divergence, Chinese healthcare education and interprofessional training. Further conceptualising the research findings, it is identified that KS is mostly prevented by philosophical and professional tensions between the two medical communities. Therefore, to improve KS and reduce the effects of the identified barriers, efforts should be made targeted at resolving both types of tensions. The conclusion advocates the establishment of national policies and hospital management strategies aimed at maintaining equality of the two medical communities and putting in place an interprofessional common ground to encourage and facilitate communication and KS.

The book examines the status of public service in developing countries, in the sectors of health, infrastructure, labour and marginalized populations, rural economy and public administration. The last decade has witnessed significant government focus on service delivery in developing nations like South Africa, Philippines, India and Malaysia. At the forefront of this movement has been the public sector reforms significantly driven by two broad factors: public sector inefficiencies and liberal economic ideology. This move towards efficient public service delivery in developing nations (versus developed nations) has required a significant shift in institutional thinking and institutional capacity for the governments. It is therefore no surprise that while economic liberalization has been relatively easy to implement, governance reforms towards public service delivery has been significantly more challenging. In this background, the chapters of the book, with sector themes, examine the three basic foundations of public policy-courses of action, regulatory measures and issues, and funding structures and priorities-in public service delivery. The book is a multi country, multi sector, perspective since it includes studies from Russian Federation, India, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Fiji, South Africa, Columbia, Philippines, Macedonia and India. This perspective lends itself to the investigation for a comprehensive overall development model.

This book encourages health professionals to reconceptualise their practice in the light of the fact that their patients are deteriorating and dying, supporting them in their dichotomous role which involves affirming that person's life whilst acknowledging that that life is ending. Professionals are encouraged to think laterally, to be creative in their use of their core skills, and to use their life skills and experience to change the focus of their interventions. By making these changes, those involved with caring for the dying will be able to address issues related to burnout and feeling de-skilled. The authors share their considerable experience with the reader - what works for both patient and carer/professional when working in this field. By providing workable solutions, they empower those in disempowering situations, such as when working with terminally ill children and adults. The book is truly holistic and client-centred in its approach, upholding the philosophy of palliative care. Aimed at all who interact with children and adults who have a life-limiting condition or who are dying Offers practical examples of approaches to dilemmas and emotional issues commonly face by those working in palliative care Encourages professionals to think laterally, to be creative in their use of core skills, and to use their life skills and experience to change the focus of their interventions Moves the emphasis away from the medical model to the emotional and spiritual influences on quality of life Offers clear, workable guidelines and demonstrates practical solutions, based on proven theory and experience, to problems encountered on a day-to-day basis by patients and those coming into contact with them

"This book is essential reading for researchers of tobacco policy change. Too many studies simply complain that change is too slow because tobacco companies are too powerful and politicians lack the will to challenge them. This book goes much further, to help us understand not just industry strategy but the policy processes in which policy advocates engage, learn from each other, and help create essential global tobacco policy change." Paul Cairney, University of Stirling, UK "This book is rare in making genuinely significant contributions across both public health and policy studies. By focusing on the battle for standardised packs, it engagingly addresses one of the most prominent recent innovations in health policy that has relevance both beyond Europe and across multiple spheres of health policy. In doing so, it also offers an innovative analysis of the role of transnational corporations in policy transfer."Jeff Collin, University of Edinburgh, UK This book analyses the battle for standardised cigarette packaging ('plain packaging') in Europe, drawing on the concepts of multi-level governance and policy transfer. It analyses the strategies of policy makers, non-governmental organisations and transnational tobacco companies in attempting either to advance or to block the introduction of standardised packaging. Taking a global and multi-level approach, it analyses these struggles within European Union institutions, EU member states, and across jurisdictions, as NGOs and tobacco companies worked transnationally to counter each other. As well as presenting original empirical research detailing these policy battles, the book provides new theoretical insights into policy transfer processes, particularly within multi-level polities, showing how transnational corporations can have dramatic effects on these processes. The book will appeal equally to public health researchers, policy analysts and political scientists.

Clinical and biomedical research production is rapidly growing, but delivery to practitioners remains unacceptably slow. To improve health care quality and to make the best scientific achievements part of usual practices, clinicians need better information systems and services. The international, multi-disciplinary author team presents the analyses and recommendations that will lead to competitive advantages by increasing quality and effectiveness of health care delivery. The book includes the latest findings on: -Advanced information technologies in disseminating research results -Information infrastructure for transferring research -Structuring knowledge for practical application -Practical solutions: better information for improved health care quality. The practical approach of this book ensures easy to read, stand-alone chapters that will benefit medical group managers and local and commercial developers of health care information systems. The book is also a useful educational tool for medical informatics, health care administration, and health services research.