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The need for evidence-based decisions that take account of botheffectiveness and economics is greater now than ever. Using casestudies and illustrative examples throughout the authors describehow the activities and outputs of evidence synthesis, systematicreview, economic analysis and decision-making interact within andacross different spheres of health and social policy and practice. Expanding on the first edition the book now covers approaches toevidence synthesis that combine economics and systematic reviewmethods in the applied fields of social welfare, education andcriminal justice, as well as health care. Written by economists andhealth services researchers closely involved in developingevidence-based policy and practice it showcases currentstate-of-the-art methodology and will be an invaluable read for allpolicy-makers and practitioners using evidence to inform decisions,analysts conducting research to support decisions and studentsdiscovering the need for evidence-based decisions to incorporateeconomic perspectives and evidence.
Midwifery in the developed world is in a state of ferment and change - a phenomenon referred to as the "new midwifery."Reconceiving Midwiferyoffers state-of-the-art analyses of the new midwifery as it is practiced. The authors - social scientists and midwifery practitioners - reflect on regional differences in the emerging profession, providing a systematic account of its historical, local, and international roots, its evolving regulatory status, and the degree to which it has been integrated into health care systems. They also examine the nature of midwifery training, accessibility, and effectiveness across diverse ethnic and socio-economic groups, highlighting the key issues facing the profession before, during, and in the immediate post-integration era in each province.
America's health care system is at a crossroads, faced with rising costs, quality concerns, and a lack of patient control. Some blame market forces. Yet many troubles can be traced directly to pervasive government influence: entitlements, tax laws, and costly regulations. Consumer choice and competition deliver higher quality and lower prices in other areas of the economy. The authors conclude that removing restrictions can do the same for health care. In the newly updated edition, the authors expand on their prior work with new analysis of the best and worst ideas in health care reform – on both the right and the left.
Originally published in 1977 and as a second edition in 1988, this book introduces the reader to the women at the top of the midwifery profession up until the 17th Century who attended the aristocracy and Royalty. The author shows how their successors were gradually driven out of the better paid work until in the middle of the 19th Century it appeared that attendance on childbearing women would inevitably become the male monopoly it has virtually become in North America. This downward trend was reversed, thanks to efforts to preserve for women the choice of female attendance in childbirth and also to the labour of philanthropists to improve maternity services to the poor. However, the drive for the institutionalization and mechanization of childbirth during the 20th Century as well as a chronic shortage of midwives, has once again shone a spotlight on the profession. This unique history of developments in midwifery will be of interest to students of medical politics, 19th Century social history, the sociology of the professions and gender studies.
Patient management is the central clinical task of medical care. Until the 1970s, there was no generally accepted method of ensuring a scientific, critical approach to clinical decision making. And while traditional clinical authority was under attack, there was increasing concern about the way in which doctors made decisions about patient care. In this book, Jeanne Daly traces the origins, essential features, and achievements of evidence-based medicine and clinical epidemiology over the past few decades. Drawing largely on interviews with key players, she offers unique insights into the ways that practitioners of evidence-based medicine set out to generate scientific knowledge about patient care and how, in the process, they reshaped the way medicine is practiced and administered.
Exploring notions of the person through a wide range of anthropological literature, Cathrine Degnen analyses how personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained during various life stages and via multiple cultural forms and practices. In discussing the life course, she investigates personhood as a concept at the beginning of life, throughout life as lived, at the edges of being, and ultimately at life’s end. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course moves beyond the human person in isolation to consider how personhood is fashioned with regard to place and how non-humans can also be recognised as persons. Through multiple ethnographic accounts, Degnen shows that personhood emerges as a relational and processual entity, brought into being via reciprocal fields of social relations.
In recent years the study of nursing history in Britain has been transformed by the application of concepts and methods from the social sciences to original sources. The myths and legends which have grown up through a century of anecdotal writing have been chipped away to reveal the complex story of an occupation shaped and reshaped by social and technological change. Most of the work has been scattered in monographs, journals and edited collections. The skills of a social historian, a sociologist and a graduate nurse have been brought together to rethink the history of modern nursing in the light of the latest scholarship. The account starts by looking at the type of nursing care available in 1800. This was usually provided by the sick person's family or household servants. It traces the interdependent growth of general nursing and the modern hospital and examines the separate origins and eventual integration of mental nursing, district nursing, health visiting and midwifery. It concludes with reflections on the prospects for nursing in the year 2000.
Vaccinate children against deadly pneumococcal disease, or pay for cardiac patients to undergo lifesaving surgery? Cover the costs of dialysis for kidney patients, or channel the money toward preventing the conditions that lead to renal failure in the first place? Policymakers dealing with the realities of limited health care budgets face tough decisions like these regularly. And for many individuals, their personal health care choices are equally stark: paying for medical treatment could push them into poverty. Many low- and middle-income countries now aspire to universal health coverage, where governments ensure that all people have access to the quality health services they need without r...
In the early stages of planning the Third International Conference in System Science in Health Care, the steering committee members, most of whom had participated in the first conference in Paris (1976) and the second in Montreal (1980), made some basic decisions about organization of subject matter. The earlier meetings had been very successful in bringing together specialists from the health professions and the traditional sciences. In addition to physicians and nurses, these were representatives of the disciplines of the behavioral sciences, system theory, economics, engineering, and the emergency fields of management science and informatics -all concerned with the development of health r...