Search results
1 – 10 of over 31000Maria Vincenza Ciasullo, Mariarosaria Carli, Weng Marc Lim and Rocco Palumbo
The article applies the citizen science phenomenon – i.e. lay people involvement in research endeavours aimed at pushing forward scientific knowledge – to healthcare. Attention is…
Abstract
Purpose
The article applies the citizen science phenomenon – i.e. lay people involvement in research endeavours aimed at pushing forward scientific knowledge – to healthcare. Attention is paid to initiatives intended to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic as an illustrative case to exemplify the contribution of citizen science to system-wide innovation in healthcare.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed methodology consisting of three sequential steps was developed. Firstly, a realist literature review was carried out to contextualize citizen science to healthcare. Then, an account of successfully completed large-scale, online citizen science projects dealing with healthcare and medicine has been conducted in order to obtain preliminary information about distinguishing features of citizen science in healthcare. Thirdly, a broad search of citizen science initiatives targeted to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has been performed. A comparative case study approach has been undertaken to examine the attributes of such projects and to unravel their peculiarities.
Findings
Citizen science enacts the development of a lively healthcare ecosystem, which takes its nourishment from the voluntary contribution of lay people. Citizen scientists play different roles in accomplishing citizen science initiatives, ranging from data collectors to data analysts. Alongside enabling big data management, citizen science contributes to lay people's education and empowerment, soliciting their active involvement in service co-production and value co-creation.
Practical implications
Citizen science is still underexplored in healthcare. Even though further evidence is needed to emphasize the value of lay people's involvement in scientific research applied to healthcare, citizen science is expected to revolutionize the way innovation is pursued and achieved in the healthcare ecosystem. Engaging lay people in a co-creating partnership with expert scientist can help us to address unprecedented health-related challenges and to shape the future of healthcare. Tailored health policy and management interventions are required to empower lay people and to stimulate their active engagement in value co-creation.
Originality/value
Citizen science relies on the wisdom of the crowd to address major issues faced by healthcare organizations. The article comes up with a state of the art investigation of citizen science in healthcare, shedding light on its attributes and envisioning avenues for further development.
Details
Keywords
Alba Barbarà-i-Molinero, Cristina Sancha and Rosalia Cascón-Pereira
The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the level of professional identity strength between healthcare and social sciences students.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the level of professional identity strength between healthcare and social sciences students.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a sample of 339 students, the authors conduct an ANOVA analysis in order to compare students’ professional identity strength across the abovementioned groups.
Findings
The authors’ results show that there are significant differences in professional identity strength between healthcare and social sciences students. In particular, healthcare sciences students show stronger professional identity than social sciences students.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the existing literature on professional identity in higher education by being the first study comparing student’s professional identity between bachelor degrees from different professional fields of study and by showing the relevance of discipline as a contextual variable in the study of students’ professional identity.
Details
Keywords
At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public…
Abstract
At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public health) and other industry sectors, began to recognize the limitations of the current fragmented healthcare system paradigm. Primary stakeholders, including employers, insurance companies, and healthcare professional organizations, also voiced dissatisfaction with unacceptable health outcomes and rising costs. Grand challenges and wicked problems threatened the viability of the health sector. American health systems responded with innovations and advances in healthcare delivery frameworks that encouraged shifts from intra- and inter-sector arrangements to multi-sector, lasting relationships that emphasized patient centrality along with long-term commitments to sustainability and accountability. This pathway, leading to a population health approach, also generated the need for transformative business models. The coproduction of health framework, with its emphasis on cross-sector alignments, nontraditional partner relationships, sustainable missions, and accountability capable of yielding return on investments, has emerged as a unique strategy for facing disruptive threats and challenges from nonhealth sector corporations. This chapter presents a coproduction of health framework, goals and criteria, examples of boundary spanning network alliance models, and operational (integrator, convener, aggregator) strategies. A comparison of important organizational science theories, including institutional theory, network/network analysis theory, and resource dependency theory, provides suggestions for future research directions necessary to validate the utility of the coproduction of health framework as a precursor for paradigm change.
Details
Keywords
Sandra Pennbrant and Lars Svensson
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe work-integrated learning (WIL) related to healthcare pedagogics, and to describe the distinctive aspects of research on WIL with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe work-integrated learning (WIL) related to healthcare pedagogics, and to describe the distinctive aspects of research on WIL with specialization in healthcare pedagogics.
Design/methodology/approach
The general purpose of this theoretical paper is to define and formulate a research agenda within WIL with specialization in healthcare pedagogics.
Findings
WIL with specialization in healthcare pedagogics is a multidisciplinary field of knowledge encompassing education, health sciences and social sciences, and focuses on research and knowledge-creation involving nursing schools in higher education, healthcare organizations and the surrounding community.
Originality/value
The starting point of the research environment is the ambition to gain knowledge about the conditions, processes and outcomes in healthcare education and healthcare organizations, both individually and collectively, intra- and inter-professionally, in the perspective of life-long learning. WIL with specialization in healthcare pedagogics is a research area that can carry out important research in healthcare education and healthcare organization and, thus, contribute to high-quality care meeting current and future needs.
Details
Keywords
Gregg A. Stevens, Martin Morris, Tony Nguyen and Emily Vardell
Health science librarians occupy a unique place in librarianship, guiding healthcare professionals and the public to quality sources of medical research and consumer health…
Abstract
Health science librarians occupy a unique place in librarianship, guiding healthcare professionals and the public to quality sources of medical research and consumer health information in order to improve patient outcomes and quality of life. A broader impact of health sciences librarianship is its advocacy for improvements in public health. In recent years, health science librarians have been actively involved in advocating for adequate, responsive, and culturally competent health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals. Health sciences librarians have advocated for LGBTQ+ individuals through a variety of specialized outreach projects to address health disparities found in the LGBTQ+ community such as HIV/AIDS, women’s health, or substance abuse, have collaborated with public health agencies and community-based organizations to identify health disparities and needs, and have implemented outreach to address these needs.
This chapter maps the landscape of health sciences librarian outreach to LGBTQ+ people. The authors develop this theme through case studies of health science librarians providing health information to the LGBTQ+ community and healthcare professionals. Following an overview of advocacy for LGBTQ+ health by the US National Network of Libraries of Medicine and professional information organizations, they conclude the chapter by discussing the “pioneering” nature of these projects and the common threads uniting them, and by identifying the next steps for continued successful outreach through the development of an evidence base and tailoring of outreach and resources to address other demographic aspects of the members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Details
Keywords
In a context of critical transition such as the COVID-19 pandemic, moral semantics take a prominent role as a form of self-description of society. However, they are not usually…
Abstract
Purpose
In a context of critical transition such as the COVID-19 pandemic, moral semantics take a prominent role as a form of self-description of society. However, they are not usually observed, but rather assumed as self-evident and necessarily “good.” The purpose of the article is to summarize the theory of morality from the social systems' perspective and illustrate with concrete examples the polemogenous nature of moral communication.
Design/methodology/approach
This article presents an analysis of the role of morality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. Applying the method of second-order observation, it describes three cases of moral semantics disseminated via mass media and social media, and it examines their connection with the structural situation of subsystems of society during the pandemic crisis (particularly healthcare, politics and science).
Findings
Second-order observation of moral communication demonstrates to be fruitful to describe the conditions and consequences in which moralization of communication occurs, particularly in a situation of critical transition around the healthcare crisis. The three examples examined, namely, the hero semantics directed to healthcare workers, the semantics of indiscipline and the controversies around pseudo-sciences and conspiracy theories, show how they are based on social attribution of esteem and disesteem, how they try to answer to troublesome situations and contradictions that seem difficult to cope, and how they are close related to the emergence of conflicts, even when they seem positive oriented and well intentioned.
Originality/value
This paper is an attempt to test the usefulness of Luhmann's theory of society to understand the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and particularly the role of moral communication in concrete examples.
Details
Keywords
Christine Jorm, Rick Iedema, Donella Piper, Nicholas Goodwin and Andrew Searles
The purpose of this paper is to argue for an improved conceptualisation of health service research, using Stengers' (2018) metaphor of “slow science” as a critical yardstick.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to argue for an improved conceptualisation of health service research, using Stengers' (2018) metaphor of “slow science” as a critical yardstick.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is structured in three parts. It first reviews the field of health services research and the approaches that dominate it. It then considers the healthcare research approaches whose principles and methodologies are more aligned with “slow science” before presenting a description of a “slow science” project in which the authors are currently engaged.
Findings
Current approaches to health service research struggle to offer adequate resources for resolving frontline complexity, principally because they set more store by knowledge generalisation, disciplinary continuity and integrity and the consolidation of expertise, than by engaging with frontline complexity on its terms, negotiating issues with frontline staff and patients on their terms and framing findings and solutions in ways that key in to the in situ dynamics and complexities that define health service delivery.
Originality/value
There is a need to engage in a paradigm shift that engages health services as co-researchers, prioritising practical change and local involvement over knowledge production. Economics is a research field where the products are of natural appeal to powerful health service managers. A “slow science” approach adopted by the embedded Economist Program with its emphasis on pre-implementation, knowledge mobilisation and parallel site capacity development sets out how research can be flexibly produced to improve health services.
Details
Keywords
Brett Bowman, Richard Matzopoulos and Leonard Lerer
The purpose of this paper is to examine the profile of health and disease and current status of healthcare in the UAE, in particular Emirate of Abu Dhabi, distilling implications…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the profile of health and disease and current status of healthcare in the UAE, in particular Emirate of Abu Dhabi, distilling implications for sustainable economic growth and population well being.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of available secondary sources including epidemiological and healthcare data and burden of disease (BoD) literature.
Findings
The UAE is facing a major epidemiological transition with a shifting BoD in the form of increasing non‐communicable diseases and a high incidence of injuries. In addition to the seemingly upward prevalence of these key drivers is the fact that the recent advances in UAE health service development have been based on substantial investment in physical infrastructure that is not being matched with the human resources, technology assessment, management and governance that are required to ensure sustainability and quality, in the long‐term.
Practical implications
It is proposed that sustained economic growth can only be ensured through the design, implementation and evaluation of a coordinated health and healthcare research and development strategy that advances international best‐practice in public health, health service and health promotion. Specifically, the strategy should include ongoing surveillance and monitoring of the general health patterns of the population to inform the prevention of non‐communicable disease and injuries. Prevention strategies should encourage inclusive stakeholder inputs and participation.
Originality/value
The paper represents a concise summary of the shifting disease patterns and state of health care in the UAE. Its viewpoint will interest the entire spectrum of healthcare stakeholders: patients, providers and those responsible for planning, assuring the quality of services and financing the health system.
Details
Keywords
Mitchell N. Sarkies, Joanna Moullin, Teralynn Ludwick and Suzanne Robinson
Muhammad Javed Ramzan, Saif Ur Rehman Khan, Inayat ur-Rehman, Muhammad Habib Ur Rehman and Ehab Nabiel Al-khannaq
In recent years, data science has become a high-demand profession, thereby attracting transmuters (individuals who want to change their profession due to industry trends) to this…
Abstract
Purpose
In recent years, data science has become a high-demand profession, thereby attracting transmuters (individuals who want to change their profession due to industry trends) to this field. The primary purpose of this paper is to guide transmuters in becoming data scientists.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory study was conducted to uncover the challenges faced by data scientists according to their educational backgrounds. An extensive set of responses from 31 countries was received.
Findings
The results reveal that skill requirements and tool usage vary significantly with educational background. However, regardless of differences in academic background, the data scientists surveyed spend more time analyzing data than operationalizing insight.
Research limitations/implications
The collected data are available to support replication in various scenarios, for example, for use as a roadmap for those with an educational background in art-related disciplines. Additional empirical studies can also be conducted specific to geographical location.
Practical implications
The current work has categorized data scientists by their fields of study making it easier for universities and online academies to suggest required knowledge (courses) according to prospective students' educational background.
Originality/value
The conducted study suggests the required knowledge and skills for transmuters to acquire, based on their educational background, and reports a set of motivational factors attracting them to adopt the data science field.
Details