Public Sector Healthcare Organisations Research Articles

Coping with the financiers: attracting venture capital investors and end-users in the biomaterials industry

A substantial amount of research has been committed to exploring how university-based research can be transferred to industry and be commercialised. This literature emphasises the substantial institutional, cultural and financial barriers to what has been referred to as academic entrepreneurship. At the same time, and most noteworthy in the USA, university patenting has grown remarkably since the mid-1960s; today (2014), much of the basic life science research conducted by universities is being transformed into health care innovations. This paper reports on a case study of the biomaterials and medical device industry in Sweden and emphasises that, while capital funding is a key challenge for university spin-outs, an additional and less widely recognised concern facing these companies is how to make the public sector health care organisations, primarily, actually buy the products developed. The study suggests that perhaps too much emphasis is being put on ‘upstream activities’, including the early stage support provided by incubators and state agencies that provide seed-money funding, while more mature biomaterials and medical device companies are suffering from both a lack of unified regulatory frameworks and policies governing the procurement of new health care innovations.

Job satisfaction among public health professionals working in public sector: a cross sectional study from Pakistan

BackgroundJob satisfaction largely determines the productivity and efficiency of human resource for health. It literally depicts the extent to which professionals like or dislike their jobs. Job satisfaction is said to be linked with the employee’s work environment, job responsibilities and powers and time pressure; the determinants which affect employee’s organizational commitment and consequently the quality of services. The objective of the study was to determine the level of and factors influencing job satisfaction among public health professionals in the public sector.MethodsThis was a cross sectional study conducted in Islamabad, Pakistan. Sample size was universal including 73 public health professionals, with postgraduate qualifications and working in government departments of Islamabad. A validated structured questionnaire was used to collect data from April to October 2011.ResultsOverall satisfaction rate was 41% only, while 45% were somewhat satisfied and 14% of professionals highly dissatisfied with their jobs. For those who were not satisfied, working environment, job description and time pressure were the major causes. Other factors influencing the level of satisfaction were low salaries, lack of training opportunities, improper supervision and inadequate financial rewards.ConclusionOur study documented a relatively low level of overall satisfaction among workers in public sector health care organizations. Considering the factors responsible for this state of affairs, urgent and concrete strategies must be developed to address the concerns of public health professionals as they represent a highly sensitive domain of health system of Pakistan. Improving the overall work environment, review of job descriptions and better remuneration might bring about a positive change.

“The Worse You Behave, The More You Seem, to be Rewarded”: Bullying in Nursing as Organizational Corruption

This paper reports findings from the first, qualitative stage of a national sequential, mixed method study of bullying in the Australian nursing workplace. Twenty-six nurses who had experience of workplace bullying were recruited from two Australian public sector health care organizations. Examining the narrative data from the viewpoint of bullying being a corrupt activity we present an alternative perspective on group acts of bullying. By exploring bullying as corrupt behaviour, this paper challenges the assumption that bullying can be principally considered a series of isolated events stemming from interpersonal conflict, organizational pressures, or poor work design. Corruption in organizations has not previously been linked with or compared to bullying. In revealing the manner in which actors can engage in corrupt conduct that includes bullying, the findings from our study offer important implications for the management of workplace bullying as a serious and corrupt activity.

Introduction: Quality Improvement in Public Sector Healthcare Organizations

Introduction: Quality Improvement in Public Sector Healthcare Organizations

Marketing Tuberculosis Prevention Programs to Foreign-Born Vietnamese: The Role of Culture in the Effective Diffusion of Public Sector Health Care Services

ABSTRACT This study investigates the diffusion of tuberculosis prevention programs as they are implemented by government health care agencies serving foreign-born Vietnamese health care consumers. The results indicate that the marketing model of diffusion must be explicitly expanded when the cultural beliefs of the adopters are different from those of the innovators. In this context, both the innovators and the adopters become part of a dynamic, cross-cultural model of diffusion that proactively addresses the public health dilemma of tuberculosis among recent immigrant populations in the United States. Implications are provided for enhancing the marketing strategies of public sector health care organizations.

Measuring service quality in the public sector: The potential for SERVQUAL

The use of a variety of measures of service quality in the private sector as critical indicators of both organizational performance and general customer satisfaction is widely accepted and has given rise to considerable empirical research. Organizations operating within the public sector-health care organizations, local government, police, emergency services, government agencies-have also come to realize that customer service and quality are critical strategic issues in the late 1990s. However, it is also widely recognized that such public sector organizations face particular difficulties in measuring service quality. In this article, the authors discuss the major issues public sector organizations need to address in their search for an adequate measure of service quality, assess the potential of the SERVQUAL instrument for the public sector and report on an application of the instrument to a public library service.