Social science & medicine
-
Social science & medicine · Apr 2001
ReviewManaged competition, governmentality and institutional response in the United Kingdom.
This article traces the use of managed competition policy to transform the NHS from an administered public service to a set of interlocking markets and contracts. It reviews the overlooked origins of managed competition in the new managerialism and explains the relationship between managed competition and the cost crisis of the NHS by extending Foucault's concept of governmentality to revise the concept of the state. The paper then describes how the government structured health care markets, using managed competition as an instrument of governmentality. ⋯ Yet, this analysis contends, managed competition has left an enduring legacy of accountability to purchasers in economic terms such as efficiency, transaction costs, and cost effectiveness. The policies of the new government are based on coercive partnering and doctor-based "commissioning". This and the Internet imply revolutionary changes for the health professions and the delivery of health care services through networks of moebius-strip organisations interacting in flexible sequences and subject to communitarian pressures.
-
Social science & medicine · Feb 2001
Multicenter StudyMental health and stress in the workplace: the case of general practice in the UK.
This study adopted a 'workforce' perspective in a study of job strain in primary care (general practice) in the UK. It explored the level of stress amongst workers in general practice and between practices and examined the relationship between level of stress and work characteristics. ⋯ Work characteristics as measured by Karasek's Job Content Instrument were shown to be significant predictors of job stress as were marital status and health status. The implications of these findings are discussed, particularly focusing on the value of the job strain model for explaining job stress in general practice.
-
Social science & medicine · Feb 2001
Tactics at the interface: Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health managers.
Over the past thirty years in Australia, there has been a recognition of the need for increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in the management of their health services as part of the strategy to improve the poor health of Australia's indigenous peoples. The proliferation of Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Services and the vigorous advocacy of groups such as the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation have significantly contributed to this recognition. This, combined with additional management opportunities in government service, has drawn attention to difficulties in recruiting and retaining appropriately experienced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander managers, particularly in the northern states of Australia.
-
Social science & medicine · Jan 2001
Paternalism, patient autonomy, and moral deliberation in the physician-patient relationship. Attitudes among Norwegian physicians.
Sixteen statements on physician attitudes in the physician-patient relationship were presented to a representative sample of Norwegian physicians (N=990). Three moderately correlated theoretical dimensions were identified in a principal component analysis: paternalism, patient autonomy, and moral deliberation. The paternalism scores increased significantly with age, and psychiatrists scored significantly lower than physicians in somatic specialties. ⋯ The four groups of physicians with 'consistent' attitudes contained between 12 and 19% of the total sample, whereas 37% belonged to the 'ambivalent' group. Laboratory doctors and surgeons belonged significantly more often in the group of classical paternalists than did general practitioners, whereas male physicians were more often modern paternalists than were female physicians. Among the autonomists, women were more numerous than men, doctors in their 40s clearly more numerous than those in their 60s, and psychiatrists clearly more numerous than residents.