According to social psychologist A. Daniel Yarmey, police officers find the nature of their work necessitates that they behave to some extent like applied psychologists. Many police officers, of course, do not have any special training in this or any allied field, nor do they have an understanding of what cognitive or social psychology might be able to tell them about the behavior of those with whom they are likely to deal in their daily work. Similarly, psychologists are habitually asked by the courts to present research regarding eyewitness testimony, forensic evidence, and competency to stand trial, yet psychologists frequently lack any real awareness of policing or of police officers.

"Understanding Police and Police Work," the first systematic an comprehensive review of the psychology of police and their work, focuses on the psychological basis of police officers' interactions with society. It shows how psychology and other social sciences can contribute to an understanding of police behavior as well as the behavior of citizens and other professionals with whom the police are involved.

Gabriel of Urantia asked the question, in the beginning of his struggle with dialysis, "God, why is this happening to me?" Throughout his 8-month dialysis experience, 3 days a week, 4 hours a day, being tied down to a chair while his blood flowed from his body through a machine and back, he realizes-from the people he meets also on dialysis and in the hospitals after post-kidney-transplant-that very bad things happen to very good people. He met young and old alike, tied down to the machines just like he was, and the young people were the hardest for him to resolve in his mind with God and also to try to give them hope. As a minister, he felt obligated to do so. Being a Pastor of a church (Global Community Communications Alliance-a very social, environmental, and spiritual activist church), he knew that bad things happened to good people who try to change the world. But this disease is personal, between him and God you might say. So he had to discover for himself why God allowed this to happen to him and to the other very good people he met with various traumatic illnesses in the hospitals and dialysis centers. Gabriel of Urantia tries to explain how he felt along the path, from the beginning to the receiving of his new kidney from his 22-year-old daughter and gaining the hope and health to continue not only his spiritual work, but his work as a musician, guitar player, and singer (in which he was planning a tour around the country with his 11-piece Bright & Morning Star Band), while now taking immunosuppressant drugs to keep him alive. He had all the fears that a new transplant patient has. How long will the kidney last? What other affects do these drugs have on my body? He writes about his experience with the medical world, the services he experienced from both very qualified people and those not so qualified (experienced and inexperienced care givers), as well as the bureaucracy of the medical field and insurance companies (both private and governmental). He realized that often in the medical field, the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing and the patient suffered the results. Beyond that, Gabriel of Urantia tries to give hope to people with life-threatening illnesses by sharing his faith in the Creator to all who may read his book. A must-read for anyone on dialysis or with any life-threatening illness, from a writer who went through this and can identify with what they are going through and give them hope through this trauma in their lives.

Shock Therapy For the American Health Care System describes the problems of the health care system and offers a program of comprehensive reform that is more far-reaching than anything currently being proposed. From a veteran physician comes this remarkably clear-eyed look at what's wrong with how we adminster and pay for health care and what can be done to fix it. In Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System: Why Comprehensive Reform Is Needed, Dr. Robert Levine offers an easily understandable diagnosis of the problems plaguing our current health care infrastructure, with discussions that include the roles of various stakeholders—insurance companies, "big pharma," hospitals, health care providers, and patients. He also dispels a number of myths designed to make voters leery of any reform efforts. Levine's comprehensive plan addresses everything from bloated bureaucracies to unnecessary procedures to the handling of negligence and malpractice lawsuits/claims. Throughout, Levine backs his proposals with facts and comparisons to systems in various countries, and concludes that even now, with disaster looming, the ultimate goal of providing health insurance for every American is achievable and affordable.

After World War II, Sweden led the Western world in social programs. By the 1970s it was considered a model of the successful welfare state, providing a broader and more elaborate system of social programs and security to more people than any other country, the centerpiece of which was its health care system. As Twaddle explains, however, by 1990 there was a significant shift in Sweden's health policy debates.

Instead of speaking about the medical care system in terms of effectiveness, solidarity, and public planning, the discussions grew focused on competition, markets, and privatization, taking on more of the characteristics of the U.S. system. Twaddle explores the nature of the proposed changes in medical care, the context in which those changes were being proposed, and the steps that were taken to implement change. He concludes that the problem of market- oriented reforms in health care seems to be almost universal.

This unifying volume offers a clear theoretical framework for the research shaping the emerging direction of informatics in health care. Contributors ground the reader in the basics of informatics methodology and design, including creating salient research questions, and explore the human dimensions of informatics in studies detailing how patients perceive, respond to, and use health data. Real-world examples bridge the theoretical and the practical as knowledge management-based solutions are applied to pervasive issues in information technologies and service delivery. Together, these articles illustrate the scope of health possibilities for informatics, from patient care management to hospital administration, from improving patient satisfaction to expanding the parameters of practice. Highlights of the coverage:* Design science research opportunities in health care * IS/IT governance in health care: an integrative model * Persuasive technologies and behavior modification through technology: design of a mobile application for behavior change * The development of a hospital secure messaging and communication platform: a conceptualization * The development of intelligent patient-centric systems for health care * An investigation on integrating Eastern and Western medicine with informatics Interest in Theories to Inform Superior Health Informatics Research and Practice cuts across academia and the healthcare industry. Its audience includes healthcare professionals, physicians and other clinicians, practicing informaticians, hospital administrators, IT departments, managers, and management consultants, as well as scholars, researchers, and students in health informatics and public health.

Written by a pediatrician for pediatric clinicians on the front line in response to the ever increasing obligations they acquire for the well being of children, this book focuses on the potential of health care to impact the social morbidities that affect children's health. Dr. Rushton does not suggest that child health practitioners must do more, but rather they must reorient their efforts in order to achieve optimal outcomes for children. As specialists in child health, pediatric clinicians have skills they can utilize to ensure better outcomes for children, but doing so will require a reorganization of health supervision and the establishment of links with other social services. Group visits, psychosocial screening, school health, public-private partnerships, home visitation, parent-child centers, and use of auxiliary anticipatory guidance specialists are all tools described in the development of a coordinated, community-based, family-centered approach to pediatric health care supervision. This is a book for private practitioners, community health professionals, academicians who support them, and all those others who want to ensure that our children are nurtured by the child health care system. The crux of this book is to provide a template for thoughtful consideration by the thousands of pediatric providers who care deeply about their profession.

Nearly twenty percent of Americans live today with some sort of disability, and this number will grow in coming decades as the population ages. Despite this, the U.S. health care system is not set up to provide care comfortably, safely, and efficiently to persons with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities can therefore face significant barriers to obtaining high quality health care. Some barriers result from obvious impediments, such as doors without automatic openers and examining tables that are too high. Other barriers arise from faulty communication between patients and health care professionals, including misconceptions among clinicians about the daily lives, preferences, values, and abilities of persons with disabilities. Yet additional barriers relate to health insurance limits on items and services essential to maximizing health and independence. This book examines the health care experiences of persons who are blind, deaf, hard of hearing, or who have difficulties using their legs, arms, or hands. The book then outlines strategies for overcoming or circumventing barriers to care, starting by just asking persons with disabilities about workable solutions. Creating safe and accessible health care for persons with disabilities will likely benefit everyone at some point. This book has three parts. The first part looks at the historical roots of healthcare access for persons with disabilities in the United States. The second part discusses the current situation and the special challenges for those with disabilities. The third part looks forward to discuss the ways in which healthcare quality and access can improve.

This book explores three interlinked themes: the models and nature of organizational change; the implementation of Business Process Reengineering (BPR); and the management of contemporary public sector organizations. The authors describe and evaluate a BPR programme in a major NHS teaching hospital - its successes and its shortcomings.

This book provides a pioneering approach to modeling the human diabetic patient using a software agent. It is based on two MASc (Master of Applied Science) theses: one looking at the evolution of the patient agent in time, and another looking the interaction of the patient agent with the healthcare system. It shows that the software agent evolves in a manner analogous to the human patient and exhibits typical attributes of the illness such as reacting to food consumption, medications, and activity. This agent model can be used in a number of different ways, including as a prototype for a specific human patient with the purpose of helping to identify when that patient's condition deviates from normal variations. The software agent can also be used to study the interaction between the human patient and the health care system. This book is of interest to anyone involved in the management of diabetic patients or in societal research into the management of diabetes. The diabetic patient agent was developed using the Ackerman model for diabetes, but this model can be easily adapted for any other model subject with the necessary physiological data to support that model.

Written by 36 Palestinian, Israeli, and international health professionals, this book is a courageous experiment, the first of its kind, made by individuals from both sides of the Israeli-Palestianian conflict, jointly examining their common history in the field of health and the future that awaits them. This is a time when their healthcare systems are separating and an independent Palestinian health care system is being established. It serves as a unique resource for understanding the processes of change in civil societies affected by political and military struggle, and during the ensuing postconflict era affected by it.

The book describes and analyzes how health policy was designed and implemented during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (1967-1993) by both sides--at times together, at times separately, and at times through confrontation--and how they are preparing for the new era that began with the 1993 Oslo Accords. Thanks to the authors' candor and their readiness to supplement professional analyses with personal accounts, the volume presents an important human document. The combination attests to the special role played by health professionals in promoting cooperation both in conflict and postconflict eras. As such, the study will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and officials involved with Palestinian-Israeli issues and to others dealing with regional, national, and ethnic conflicts worldwide.

In the wake of structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and health reforms in the 1990s, the majority of sub-Saharan African governments spend less than ten dollars per capita on health annually, and many Africans have limited access to basic medical care. Using a community-level approach, anthropologist Ellen E. Foley analyzes the implementation of global health policies and how they become intertwined with existing social and political inequalities in Senegal. ""Your Pocket Is What Cures You"" examines qualitative shifts in health and healing spurred by these reforms, and analyzes the dilemmas they create for health professionals and patients alike. It also explores how cultural frameworks, particularly those stemming from Islam and Wolof ethnomedicine, are central to understanding how people manage vulnerability to ill health. While offering a critique of neoliberal health policies, ""Your Pocket Is What Cures You"" remains grounded in ethnography to highlight the struggles of men and women who are precariously balanced on twin precipices of crumbling health systems and economic decline. Their stories demonstrate what happens when market-based health reforms collide with material, political, and social realities in African societies.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the best single record we have which details the multifarious medical practitioners in early modern London. It reveals the attitudes and realities in the conflict between the College of Physicians and the practitioners, male and female, whom the College regarded as illicit or irregular. Physicians have had a major role in framing the middle-class values of modern western society, especially those relating to the professions. This book questions the bases of this hegemony, by looking first at the early modern physician's insecurities in terms of status and gender, and then at the wider world of artisanal and contractual medicine in London which the College of Physicians sought to suppress.

The book examines various scientific, economic, and cultural forces that have affected the mental health field's viewpoint—and that of society in general—regarding the genesis of some behavioral disorders, and how dysfunctional family dynamics play an often overlooked role. Millions of Americans have psychological issues or are affected by those of their family members, ranging from anxiety and bipolar disorder to mood and personality disorders. The growth of Big Pharma, combined with an increasing desire of managed care providers to find simple and "quick fixes," has resulted in an often myopic focus on biological causes of dysfunctional symptoms. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that this propensity to only prescribe pills is often deeply misguided, however. This book examines the role of dysfunctional family interactions in the genesis and maintenance of certain behavioral problems. The author presents a case for regaining a balance in terms of the biological, psychological, and family-system factors in psychiatric disorders and suggests a way to accomplish this.

As a result of the AIDS epidemic, many nations around the world have faced the demands of caring for a particularly vulnerable population of children, the orphans of parents who have died of AIDS or whose caregivers are terminally ill from the disease. Overcoming AIDS: Lessons Learned from Uganda offers an in-depth exploration of this global issue and provides a broad focus on evolving a constructive response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This collaborative resource is the fourth in the Research in Global Child Advocacy book series, and it offers readers a glimpse into the experience of HIV/AIDS infected and affected people from the perspective of researchers, policy makers, and professionals who diligently work toward crafting a framework for action that is integrated across disciplines. Despite the enormity and intensity of the problem, chapter authors share a commitment to advocate for a better world in which social and economic disparities do not preclude children from experiencing a future that is bright with potential opportunities and hope.

A description of the social, educational, and economic impact of living with a neurological genetic disorder, neurofibromatosis 1. The many unpredictable and potentially stigmatizing possible symptoms of NF1, which range from physical disfigurement to severe learning disorders, may have serious consequences in every aspect of daily life. NF1 was for many years wrongly diagnosed as the Elephant Man's Disease.

Ablon examines the psychosocial costs of this misdiagnosis and the ways in which stage, screen, and television parlayed The Elephant Man into the personification of the grimmist extreme of ugliness. This portrayal engendered fear and anxiety for affected persons and their families and also had an impact on the scientific and medical communities. Ablon analyzes the factors that affect individual positive adaptation to NF1 and the demands of American society, and offers suggestions for families, support systems, and health care providers for treatment of affected individuals.

This book offers an elaborate and empirical look at service quality of hospitals in the emerging market of India. The poor quality of service is a major issue in a large number of hospitals (particularly in government hospitals), which forces patients to opt for private hospitals that are generally much more expensive than government hospitals. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of service quality antecedents in Indian hospitals. It focuses on patient satisfaction and includes valuable insights and implications for hospital management and government. The book is theoretically grounded in SERVQUAL literature and uses appropriate and sophisticated techniques and tools to analyse data. It highlights causal model development with Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and introduces a classification model, developed using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), in order to benchmark specialty cardiac care. The book also deals with Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and compares the error rates between SVM and ANN to find the best classification technique among the two. Overall, this book is a timely and relevant work that contributes to the theory, practice and policy of service quality in hospitals.