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This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Journal of Management in Medicine is split into 6 sections covering abstracts under the following headings: General Management; Personnel and Training; Quality in Health Care; Health Care Marketing; Financial Management; and Information Technology.

IT is seldom that I can bring myself to write anything for publication, and as I had a longish article on “The education of librarians in Great Britain” printed as recently as 1964 in the Lucknow Librarian (which is edited by my friend Mr. R. P. Hingorani) I had not contemplated any further effort for some time to come. But as THE LIBRARY WORLD evidently wishes to cover all the British schools of librarianship it would be a pity for Brighton to be left out, even though, coming as it does towards the end of a gruelling series, I can see little prospect of this contribution being read. Perhaps, therefore, I need not apologise for the fact that, as my own life and fortunes have been (and still are) inextricably bound up with those of the Brighton school, any account which I write of the school is bound to be a very personal one.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a psychiatric clinic in a general hospital can function in conflict-ridden Iraq through the easing of patient access to services.

The workload of psychiatrists was analyzed for one year (2010) at the psychiatry consultation clinic located in the campus of the Medical City Hospital in Central Baghdad which is also a training center.

A total of 2,997 consultations (both adults and children) occurred in 2010. In total, 96 percent were self or family referrals. Patient services were provided by five consulting psychiatrists for a variety of psychiatric disorders. The main therapeutic intervention was the prescription of psychotropics.

Despite the turbulent circumstances and limited mental health resources in Iraq, this clinic was established as a model to attract patients for consultation and triage management to reduce appointment defaults and delayed care.

The data can contribute to the planning and development of mental health services in Iraq, contributing to the current body of literature and serving as a model for other conflict areas.

To best of the understanding this study is the first in the country.

This paper aims to assess patient satisfaction with nursing care and related hospital services, and association between satisfaction and patient characteristics at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL).

A systematically selected sample of 380 patients warded for three to 90 days in general surgical/medical units was interviewed on discharge. Data were collected using a satisfaction instrument previously developed and validated for the same setting, that contained 36 items under five sub‐scales. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to identify factors associated with satisfaction in each sub‐scale.

The paper finds that the majority of respondents were males (61 percent), aged 35‐64 years (70 percent), educated to GCE (O/L) and above (61 percent), and previously hospitalized (66 percent). The proportion satisfied with “interpersonal care” was 81.8 percent, “efficiency and competency”, 89.7 percent, “comfort and environment”, 59.2 percent, “cleanliness and sanitation”, 48.7 percent, and “personalized and general information”, 37.4 percent. Males reported higher satisfaction (OR varied from 2.29‐2.87, p < 0.001) than females. Patients with GCE (A/L) were less satisfied with “comfort and environment” (OR=0.45, p < 0.05) and “cleanliness and sanitation” (OR=0.45, p < 0.05) compared with those educated below grade 5. Satisfaction with “comfort and environment” was lower among patients from medical (OR=0.51, p < 0.01) rather than from surgical units.

Quality can be improved by assuring comfort, cleanliness, sanitary facilities in wards, and provision of general and personalized instructions. Nursing staff should understand patient characteristics and their expectations when providing care.

This is the first study that described patient satisfaction with nursing care and related supportive services using a validated instrument at the NHSL. The study highlighted aspects of dissatisfaction and recognized patient characteristics that predict satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of accounting in the management of Spanish military hospitals by the St John’s Order (SJO) of the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth century, a time of crisis between the Church and the State. The sacred mission of the Order required that they had a significant role outside the Roman Catholic Church in the care and treatment of the sick and infirm which required them to establish hospitals throughout Spain and across the lands that it had conquered. The study establishes that accounting played a key role in ensuring the success of the unconventional commercial relationship between the SJO and the government and the military.

Niebuhr’s typology is used to help understand how accounting practices were consistent, indeed essential, expectations of the sacred mission of the SJO and not something which represented a denial of the Order’s religious beliefs. The paper relies primarily on documents and other material located in Spanish archives.

The SJO accepted that secular accounting and accountability processes were relevant to their search for God’s love and to showing this love to others. The need for the Order to be accountable to the State was not regarded as profane and antithetical to their religious beliefs. Adopting Niebuhr’s typology of religion and society, this study concludes that the Order was an extraordinary example of Christ the transformer of the culture.

This study recognises the need to deepen the understanding of the way in which accounting practices have often played a critical role in the activities of religious organisations by examining an extraordinary example of one organisation which was engaged in an unusual, ongoing, highly complex commercial relationship with the Spanish State.

THE PATTERN OF LIBRARY PROVISION in hospitals in this country has for over half a century followed the traditional double‐track of one service for medical staff and a second for patients. Medical libraries range from the great teaching and research collections to the handful of basic works and journals; it is probable that every hospital would claim to have a collection of medical literature: a library. Not all hospitals provide books for patients, possibly three out of four, but many of those that do extend the patients' library service to members of hospital staff.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the medical waste management practices of a hospital in Southern Africa.

A case study methodology was utilised.

The results revealed that the hospital does not quantify medical waste. Segregation of medical waste into infectious waste and non‐infectious waste is not conducted according to definite rules and standards. Separation of medical waste and municipal waste is however practiced to a satisfactory extent. Wheeled trolleys are used for on‐site transportation of waste. Off‐site transportation of waste is outsourced to a private firm. Incineration is used in the final disposal of infectious waste. Non‐infectious waste is disposed using land disposal method. There is no policy and plan in place for managing medical waste. A number of problems were identified with respect to medical waste management.

The paper gives recommendations with the aim of improving medical waste management in hospitals.

There is a large body of literature on the efficiency and productivity of hospitals. Most studies focus on the effects of environmental pressures on hospital efficiency, such as payment systems (Dismuke & Sena, 1999; Sommersguter-Reichmann, 2000), competition (Rosko, 1999, 2004), Sari, 2003), and property rights (Gruca & Nath, 2001). Other studies pinpoint their attention to economic phenomena, such as economies of scale (Lindrooth, Lo Sasso, & Bazzoli, 2003; Dranove & Lindrooth, 2003), economies of scope (Prior & Sola, 2000; Grosskopf, Margaritis, & Valdmanis, 2001; Li & Rosenman, 2001), chain membership (Menke, 1997), economic behavior (Blank & Merkies, 2004), and expense preference (Rodriguez-Alvarez & Lovell, 2004).

Assesses the health care system in Greece since 1970 through examination of its output and inputs. Concerning output, the country ranks well with regard to adult life expectancy but relatively low in infant mortality. The increasing number of citizens seeking health care abroad does not portend well for quality of care. On the input side, the total number of hospitals has decreased over time, public hospitals have increased and private facilities decreased. There has also been unused hospital capacity; in rural areas there are shortages of health manpower including physicians, as well as equipment. Cultural factors seem to have adversely affected the supply of nurses nationally. Fakellaki , an informal means of paying health‐care providers, is a distinctive and negative feature.

Management accounting, inter alia, gives information on how resources are allocated within organisations. If managers wish to change patterns of resource allocation, accounting knowledge is pivotal to any change processes. In health care organisations resources follow decisions made by clinicians, hence to have an impact on resource allocations managers must influence them. Direct managerial control over clinicians is not possible or desirable in health care organisations. This article suggests that incentives are an alternative to control in health care and investigates the impact of financial incentives within hospitals, utilising a naturally occurring experimental situation that has arisen between the UK and Canada.