Search results

1 – 10 of over 24000
Book part
Publication date: 3 August 2011

Rebecca Godderis

Purpose – There is a paucity of research that examines how diagnostic decisions are made by psychiatrists. Moreover, previous work in the area tends to be grounded in labeling…

Abstract

Purpose – There is a paucity of research that examines how diagnostic decisions are made by psychiatrists. Moreover, previous work in the area tends to be grounded in labeling theory, which highlights the conflict-based nature of diagnosis. The goal of this research is to examine the utility and benefits of diagnosis to psychiatrists' everyday work.

Methodology – Using institutional ethnography (IE), I undertook a small-scale interview-based study that documented the diagnostic processes of three psychiatrists in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The IE-based goals of the study were to: (1) identify what texts were employed during the diagnostic process, (2) map sequences of action and text that coordinated psychiatric decision-making, and (3) theorize the utility of diagnosis for the everyday work of psychiatrists.

Findings – The analysis demonstrates how diagnosis can be understood as a valuable work process that produces a standardized diagnostic story in order to bring an individual's experiences of distress into relation with psychiatrists' daily practices, and institutional discourses more generally.

Limitations – Although IE-based research does not depend on large sample sizes for analytic accuracy, results from the current study need to be replicated because of the limited number of interview participants and to examine whether the diagnostic process is generalizable to other settings.

Social implications – This research challenges the idea that standardization through diagnosis is a negative process and highlights the value of diagnostic decision-making in the daily work of psychiatrists.

Details

Sociology of Diagnosis
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-575-5

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 May 2016

Cristina Zucchermaglio and Francesca Alby

This paper aims to analyze the organization of storytelling and its role in creating and sharing practical knowledge for cancer diagnosis in a medical community in Italy.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to analyze the organization of storytelling and its role in creating and sharing practical knowledge for cancer diagnosis in a medical community in Italy.

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative analysis draws upon different interactional data sets: naturally occurring diagnostic conversations among physicians in the ward, research interviews, video-based sessions in which physicians watch and discuss their diagnostic work.

Findings

The results highlight: the specific organization of storytelling practices in medical diagnostic work; three main functions that such storytelling practices play in supporting collaborative diagnostic work in the community of our study; and how storytelling practices are resources on which participants rely across settings, including ad hoc reflexive meetings.

Originality/value

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the role that storytelling plays in the diagnostic work in an understudied and yet life-saving site such as oncology.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 28 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 August 2007

Hassan Kaghazchi, Ronan Joyce and Donal Heffernan

This paper sets out to highlight the problem associated with the development of fieldbus diagnostics in a multi‐vendor environment and to propose a solution based on diagnostic

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper sets out to highlight the problem associated with the development of fieldbus diagnostics in a multi‐vendor environment and to propose a solution based on diagnostic function blocks (FB).

Design/methodology/approach

The work focuses on the “master‐slave” communication model in a PROFIBUS fieldbus system, where three different vendor solutions are investigated.

Findings

Although the fieldbus standards specify the type and format of the diagnostics data, the extent, location and sequence of diagnostics data within a controller are entirely vendor‐dependent. The outcome from this work defines a framework for representing the diagnostics data in the context of a special function block.

Originality/value

This research work defines a novel unified framework for representing the fieldbus diagnostics data using FB for multi‐vendor solutions in a PROFIBUS environment.

Details

Assembly Automation, vol. 27 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-5154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2004

Chang‐duk Kong, Ja‐young Ki, Myoung‐cheol Kang and Seong‐hee Kho

In this study, in order to facilitate application of the NNs as well as to provide user‐friendly conditions, a performance diagnostic computer code using MATLAB® was newly…

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Abstract

In this study, in order to facilitate application of the NNs as well as to provide user‐friendly conditions, a performance diagnostic computer code using MATLAB® was newly proposed. As a result, not only more precise and prompt analysis results can be obtained due to use of the toolbox in MATLAB® on diagnosis and numerical analysis, but also the graphical user interface platform can be realized. The proposed engine diagnostics system is able to train the BPN with each fault pattern and then construct the total training network by assembling the trained BPNs. The database for network learning and test was constructed using a gas turbine performance simulation program. In order to investigate reliability on construction of the database for diagnostic results, an analysis is performed with five combination cases of 40 fault patterns. Finally, a diagnostic application example for the PT6A‐62 turboprop engine is performed using the trained network with the database, which represents the best diagnostic results among test sets.

Details

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, vol. 76 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-2667

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 3 August 2011

Renee R. Anspach

The chapters PJ McGann and David J. Hutson have assembled for this volume are not only timely, coinciding with the appearance of DSM-V, but mark a defining moment in which a new…

Abstract

The chapters PJ McGann and David J. Hutson have assembled for this volume are not only timely, coinciding with the appearance of DSM-V, but mark a defining moment in which a new subfield of medical sociology has emerged. Diagnosis, which refers both to diagnostic categories and the process of creating and applying them, is a central feature (Blaxter, 1978) – if not the central feature of medical work. Annemarie Jutel, who has done much to build the sociology of diagnosis, has described the wide array of “work” diagnosis performs in the medical world:Diagnosis is integral to medicine and the way it creates social order. It organizes illness: identifying treatment options, predicting outcomes, and providing an explanatory framework. Diagnosis also serves an administrative purpose as it enables access to services and status, from insurance reimbursement to restricted-access medication, sick leave and support group membership and so on… (Jutel, 2009, p. 278)

Details

Sociology of Diagnosis
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-575-5

Book part
Publication date: 3 August 2011

Georgiann Davis

Purpose – Intersexuality is examined from a sociology of diagnosis frame to show how the diagnostic process is connected to other social constructions, offer new support that…

Abstract

Purpose – Intersexuality is examined from a sociology of diagnosis frame to show how the diagnostic process is connected to other social constructions, offer new support that medical professionals define illness in ways that sometimes carries negative consequences, and illustrate how the medical profession holds on to authority in the face of patient activism.

Methodology/approach – Data collection occurred over a two-year period (October 2008 to August 2010). Sixty-two in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals connected to the intersex community including adults with intersexuality, parents, medical professionals, and intersex activists.

Findings – Medical professionals rely on essentialist understandings of gender to justify the medicalization of intersexuality, which they currently are doing through a nomenclature shift away from intersex terminology in favor of disorders of sex development (DSD) language. This shift allows medical professionals to reassert their authority and reclaim jurisdiction over intersexuality in light of intersex activism that was successfully framing intersexuality as a social rather than biological problem.

Practical implications – This chapter encourages critical thought and action from activists and medical professionals about shifts in intersex medical management.

Social implications – Intersexuality might be experienced in less stigmatizing ways by those personally impacted.

Originality/value – The value of this research is that it connects the sociology of diagnosis literature with gender scholarship. Additional value comes from the data, which were collected after the 2006 nomenclature shift.

Book part
Publication date: 8 March 2018

Miklos A. Vasarhelyi, Michael G. Alles and Alexander Kogan

The advent of new enabling technologies and the surge in corporate scandals has combined to increase the supply, the demand, and the development of enabling technologies for a new…

Abstract

The advent of new enabling technologies and the surge in corporate scandals has combined to increase the supply, the demand, and the development of enabling technologies for a new system of continuous assurance and measurement. This paper positions continuous assurance (CA) as a methodology for the analytic monitoring of corporate business processes, taking advantage of the automation and integration of business processes brought about by information technologies. Continuous analytic monitoring-based assurance will change the objectives, timing, processes, tools, and outcomes of the assurance process.

The objectives of assurance will expand to encompass a wide set of qualitative and quantitative management reports. The nature of this assurance will be closer to supervisory activities and will involve intensive interchange with more of the firm s stakeholders than just its shareholders. The timing of the audit process will be very close to the event, automated, and will conform to the natural life cycle of the underlying business processes. The processes of assurance will change dramatically to being meta-supervisory in nature, intrusive with the potential of process interruption, and focusing on very different forms of evidential matter than the traditional audit. The tools of the audit will expand considerably with the emergence of major forms of new auditing methods relying heavily on an integrated set of automated information technology (IT) and analytical tools. These will include automatic confirmations (confirmatory extranets), control tags (transparent tagging) tools, continuity equations, and time-series cross-sectional analytics. Finally, the outcomes of the continuous assurance process will entail an expanded set of assurances, evergreen opinions, some future assurances, some improvement on control processes (through incorporating CA tests), and some improved data integrity.

A continuous audit is a methodology that enables independent auditors to provide written assurance on a subject matter, for which an entity’s management is responsible, using a series of auditors’ reports issued virtually simultaneously with, or a short period of time after, the occurrence of events underlying the subject matter.

  • CICA/AICPA Research Study on Continuous Auditing (1999)

CICA/AICPA Research Study on Continuous Auditing (1999)

Companies must disclose certain information on a current basis.

  • Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency (Sarbanes-Oxley) Act (2002)

Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency (Sarbanes-Oxley) Act (2002)

Details

Continuous Auditing
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-413-4

Article
Publication date: 16 November 2015

Ninna Meier

– The purpose of this paper is to explore how leadership is practiced across four different hospital units.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how leadership is practiced across four different hospital units.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is a comparative case study of four hospital units, based on detailed observations of the everyday work practices, interactions and interviews with ten interdisciplinary clinical managers.

Findings

Comparing leadership as configurations of practices across four different clinical settings, the author shows how flexible and often shared leadership practices were embedded in and central to the core clinical work in all units studied here, especially in more unpredictable work settings. Practices of symbolic work and emotional support to staff were particularly important when patients were severely ill.

Research limitations/implications

Based on a study conducted with qualitative methods, these results cannot be expected to apply in all clinical settings. Future research is invited to extend the findings presented here by exploring leadership practices from a micro-level perspective in additional health care contexts: particularly the embedded and emergent nature of such practices.

Practical implications

This paper shows leadership practices to be primarily embedded in the clinical work and often shared across organizational or professional boundaries.

Originality/value

This paper demonstrated how leadership practices are embedded in the everyday work in hospital units. Moreover, the analysis shows how configurations of leadership practices varied in four different clinical settings, thus contributing with contextual accounts of leadership as practice, and suggested “configurations of practice” as a way to carve out similarities and differences in leadership practices across settings.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 29 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1991

Beverly Alimo‐Metcalfe

Although they represent an increasing proportion of the UKworkforce, the number of women occupying senior positions is still verylow, and nowhere more so than in the National…

Abstract

Although they represent an increasing proportion of the UK workforce, the number of women occupying senior positions is still very low, and nowhere more so than in the National Health Service. Particular occupational groups within the NHS are researched here: nursing, medicine, pharmacy, clinical chemistry laboratories, and management. The findings reveal that women suffer disproportionately compared with men in their aspirations for the top jobs. Prevalent attitudes militate against this, such as stereotyping, opposition by management to women workers taking career breaks (which is an absolute necessity for some career‐minded mothers but to management suggests lack of commitment) and male‐dominated social concepts (”one of the boys”). It is concluded that NHS management must show greater flexibility in addressing the problems of women, their most valuable resource, before much needed recognition of women′s right to be treated fairly can be achieved.

Details

Women in Management Review, vol. 6 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0964-9425

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 July 2013

David Coghlan

Within the developing exploration of the role of the scholar-practitioner, the situation in which scholar-practitioners engage in the scholarship of practice in their own…

Abstract

Within the developing exploration of the role of the scholar-practitioner, the situation in which scholar-practitioners engage in the scholarship of practice in their own organizational systems has not received much attention. This chapter adopts the position that scholar-practitioners are not merely practitioners who do research but rather that they integrate scholarship in their practice and generate actionable knowledge, that is, knowledge that is robust for scholars and actionable for practitioners. This chapter explores the phenomenon of scholar-practitioners engaging in the scholarship of practice in their own organizational systems as inside change agents. It discusses how scholar-practitioners engage in inquiry-in-action in first-, second-, and third-person modes of inquiry and practice in the present tense and provides a methodology and methods for such engagement that it be rigorous, reflective, and relevant.

Details

Research in Organizational Change and Development
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-891-4

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