Sphere Of Health Care Research Articles

Application of an Impact of Restructuring Scale to the Healthcare Sphere

Job loss and job insecurity are frequently associated with today's widespread restructuring and downsizing of the workplace. The authors have developed an Impact of Restructuring Scale that quantifies the effects of restructuring in the healthcare sphere. The scale documents the effects of the resulting cutbacks, hospital mergers and hospital closings on two areas: quality of healthcare services and effects on staff. The study described in this article applies the scale to the healthcare sphere as reported in a sample of 1,363 nurses employed in hospitals that were being restructured. The nurses returned a self-report questionnaire in which they reported their reactions on a variety of measures designed to assess extent of restructuring initiatives, stressors, hospital support, job satisfaction and distress. Results showed that predictors of the impact of restructuring on nurses include restructuring initiatives undertaken by the hospital, deterioration of hospital facilities and services, work stressors (e.g., workload, bumping, use of generic workers) and social support. Hospital restructuring was also associated with lower job security, diminished job satisfaction and an increase in depression, anxiety and somatization.

Greetings From East Timor: The Power Of The Web

From the Editor-In-Chief Health AffairsVol. 20, No. 4: Consumers Vs. Managed Care Greetings From East Timor: The Power Of The WebJohn K. Iglehart AffiliationsFounding EditorPUBLISHED:July/August 2001Free Accesshttps://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.20.4.6AboutSectionsView PDFPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsDownload Exhibits TOPICS The health care sphere, compared with other economic sectors, has come more slowly to recognize the power of the Internet. I count myself among those who did not quickly grasp its potential, but recently I experienced my epiphany in a most unexpected way. I sent an e-mail to a colleague at the World Bank about getting together for lunch. Within minutes, a world away, he replied: “Greetings from East Timor.” This simple exchange instantly demonstrated to me the Internet’s worldwide reach. Since publication of our Nov/Dec 2000 issue on e-health, the full text of Health Affairs has been available online to subscribers, < www.healthaffairs.org >, with an archive dating to our first issue (1981). In March 2001 we began publishing papers exclusively on our Web site. Such papers are subjected to the same rigorous peer-review standards as journal articles, but their dissemination on the Web enables us to make time-sensitive material available more rapidly. For example, we published our first “Web exclusive” March 17, when Congress was moving rapidly to consider the Bush administration’s tax reform proposals. The author of “A Flexible Benefits Tax Credit for Health Insurance and More,” Lynn Etheredge, was invited a few days later by the House Ways and Means Committee to testify to the ideas contained in his paper. To make certain that Web-exclusive papers receive their due recognition, we are featuring them in the journal’s table of contents and publishing their one-page abstracts. Our latest Web exclusive, “Reevaluation of Capitation Contracting in New York and California,” by Jamie Robinson and Larry Casalino, is abstracted in this issue. We welcome reactions to our Web strategy from interested readers. Loading Comments... Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DetailsExhibitsReferencesRelated Article Metrics History Published online 1 July 2001 InformationCopyright 2001 by Project HOPE - The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.PDF download

The health of traveller-Gypsies.

Travellers are not a healthy group. They experience widespread prejudice and discrimination from the settled population. In the sphere of health care, they have poor access to services. This article reviews the prevalent health care needs of this group from the perspective of client factors and service factors.

Sexual Exploitation of Patients by Health Professionals

In our culture, the physician is entrusted with complete access to the patient's self, both mental and physical. Other health professionals may have limited privileges, eg, psychotherapists who deal with mental health. Society grants such an unlimited approach by recognizing these groups as professionals in the sphere of health care. Medicine gained this right during its professionalization, when it acquired institutional attributes recognized by society as sufficient for a profession and was granted autonomy in its function. One of medicine's necessary qualifications is its code of ethics, chief of which is to serve the patient and do no harm. Sexual contact between physician and patient explicitly lies within this arena. It has been forbidden as far back as ancient medicine, exemplified in the Hippocratic Oath, and as recently as today, delineated in the codes of the American Psychiatric Association. This book deals with sexual exploitation of patients, long existing if

Trends in health personnel.

Each quarter Health Affairs reports the significant trends in four sectors of the health care sphere: health personnel in Winter; health status and health care utilization in Spring; health care in...

Technology innovation in health care.

Each quarter, Health Affairs explores the trends of a significant sector of the health care sphere: national health care spending in Fall, health manpower in Winter, health status and health care u...

Planning and management of public health in the federal republic of germany

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the debate on public health is dominated by the question as to the cost and the financing of good health care. Indeed, expenditure planning has now become the main area of planning in the public health sector. By contrast, the plans to improve health standards and to intensify health protection as well as to improve the quality and efficacy of health provision are somewhat neglected. This is probably due, in the main, to the strong position held by the providers of medicines and medical services and thus, by the same token, to the weak position of the consumers. Although there exists a well known set of statistics and indicators to describe the state of public health in this country, there is an almost complete absence of any attempt to evaluate them for planning purposes. The scope of intervening in the sphere of health care is thus left to a large number of protagonists characterized by completely heterogeneous interests. What we lack is a system of target-oriented plans and concrete measures. In the field of providing health care and combating disease, the only available systematic planning concerns the provision of in-patient and out-patient medical services: there is no planning for the quality of such facilities or for the range and quality of psychosocial and nursing services. As regards health-expenditure planning - which has made the biggest advances - the participants enjoy a great deal of independence: the volume of spending and increases in expenditure are thus the outcome of a process of negotiation. Under the current planning philosophy, consensual decision-making enjoys a high status.

咬合と姿勢との関係について

As dentists we have mainly devoted ourselves to observing only the oral cavity. However, it should be kept in mind that the oral cavity is only part of the body. Considering the function of one's whole body, the oral cavity is not only a masticatory organ but also an important factor in the maintenance of posture. It should also be remembered that the oral cavity has a close relationship to one's neck muscles which directly effect the circulatory system. When blood carrying its full measure of oxygen and nutrition flows without any interference and the nervous system is not under any pressure, the body's healing power will be enhanced enabling a person to live a healthier and more productive life.Studying fig.5, we recognize that occlusal disorders and diseases are closely related. Diseases are not contracted unless one of the four elements such as physical construction, personality, living environment and age of a patient is somehow deficient.Every opinion on occlusion has its own virtue and brings a certain efficiency to practical treatment. In this sense the principles of gnathology play an important role in clinical diagnosis and treatment.Its success rate is only about 80 percent. It is essential to consider the patient's posture and accompanying symptoms in order to obtain a full rate of success in treatment. If this is successfully done, I predict that it may not be long before dentistry surpasses general medicine. When the occlusion cured by a dentist makes it possible for a patient to control his posture, the elimination of the causes of many diseases may be handled by the dentist only.As dentists we may be able to make a contribution in a greater sphere of health care, and I would like to propose that this should be regarded as a third medical science.

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