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1 – 10 of 284Jenny Cleland, Claire Hutchinson, Candice McBain, Jyoti Khadka, Rachel Milte, Ian Cameron and Julie Ratcliffe
This paper aims to assess the face validity to inform content validity of the Quality of Life – Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC), a new measure for quality assessment and economic…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to assess the face validity to inform content validity of the Quality of Life – Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC), a new measure for quality assessment and economic evaluation in aged care.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with older adults (66–100 years) receiving aged care services at home (n = 31) and in residential care (n = 28). Participants provided feedback on draft items to take forward to the next stage of psychometric assessment. Items were removed according to several decision criteria: ambiguity, sensitive wording, not easy to answer and/or least preferred by participants.
Findings
The initial candidate set was reduced from 34 items to 15 items to include in the next stage of the QOL-ACC development alongside the preferred response category. The reduced set reflected the views of older adults, increasing the measure’s acceptability, reliability and relevance.
Originality/value
Quality of life is a key person-centred quality indicator recommended by the recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Responding to this policy reform objective, this study documents a key stage in the development of the QOL-ACC measure, a new measure designed to assess aged care specific quality of life.
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The successful identification and management of environmental risks remains one of the most important challenges facing mankind. The global nature of environmental risks makes the…
Abstract
Purpose
The successful identification and management of environmental risks remains one of the most important challenges facing mankind. The global nature of environmental risks makes the assumption and practice of environmental responsibility difficult. This paper aims to examine the nature of this difficulty, arguing that although environmental responsibility remains global, it is situated and practiced at the local level.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a case study methodology, the paper examines three family dairy farms in Belsize, New South Wales, Australia. Repeated interviews with adult members of the farming families explored their perspectives of the past, present and future of the farm, eliciting rich narratives about relationships between farm, environment, community and individual, and the role that responsibility plays in negotiating these relationships.
Findings
Environmental responsibility is established as multi‐faceted, and negotiated between social actors as one of myriad other, competing responsibilities. Responsibility is positioned as a critical factor in the generation and maintenance of social relationships, but one which is often mobilized as a mechanism of governance. The paper argues that this can result in tension for some social actors.
Originality/value
This paper positions responsibility generally, and environmental responsibility in particular, as situated on the junction between local and global networks. This occurs as a result of the intrusion of the global into the local, and the corresponding need for individuals to act on the global stage through the medium of their local contexts. In managing the changes in behavior and identity necessary to do this successfully, responsibility is identified as one means of establishing social identity and group members, and a way of defining specific social roles.
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Brenda Leese, Paul Kind, Ian Cameron and Jennie Carpenter
A postal questionnaire was successfully used to determine generalpractitioner views about the quality of the health care servicesavailable to their patients. In the case of…
Abstract
A postal questionnaire was successfully used to determine general practitioner views about the quality of the health care services available to their patients. In the case of hospital services, 75 of the 112 respondents (67 per cent) chose orthopaedics and 52 (46 per cent) chose ophthalmology as services in need of improvement. Other hospital‐based services, chosen by at least ten general practitioners, were gynaecology, gastroenterology/endoscopy, medicine for the elderly, radiology/ultrasound, psychiatry and physiotherapy. Only 74 general practitioners chose community services, with health visiting being chosen by 25 respondents, district nursing by 24, physiotherapy by 20 and chiropody by 18, as being in need of improvement. The survey was intended to provide a basis for a dialogue between clinicians, managers and general practitioners, about how the quality of services could be improved and how they might be developed in the future.
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Liz Gill, Lesley White and Ian Cameron
This paper synthesises the literature on the issues related to the older patient, health service quality and its measurement. It discusses the need to consider these perspectives…
Abstract
This paper synthesises the literature on the issues related to the older patient, health service quality and its measurement. It discusses the need to consider these perspectives in the definition and assessment of quality of a community‐focused aged healthcare programme, and critically examines the existing evaluation of quality in healthcare, contrasting the patient's role and impact on the quality of the service and its outcome. The paper then reviews the documented problems associated with using satisfaction as an indicator of the patient's view of quality. An alternate validated approach to measuring the patient's perception of the quality of the service is identified in the services literature; this multidimensional hierarchical tool and scale, which specifically measures the patient's view of quality, is presented. The tool covers nine sub‐dimensions, four dimensions and the global perspective of quality as perceived by the patient. An adaptation of this tool is presented to measure the patient's view of quality using the relatively new Transition Aged Care programme as an example, and make the argument for the holistic measurement of transitional aged care quality, using a validated and reliable patient‐specific tool. Importantly, the paper proposes that the identification of the patient view of service quality will offer information that could specifically assist with service improvement.
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Liz Gill, Lesley White and Ian Douglas Cameron
The purpose of the paper is to identify and describe the themes underlying four concepts: client orientation, client involvement, provider empowerment, and client empowerment…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to identify and describe the themes underlying four concepts: client orientation, client involvement, provider empowerment, and client empowerment, which have been reported in the literature as influencing service participant interaction in the formation of a service. The meaning that service participants assign to each of those themes is also to be examined.
Design/methodology/approach
Triadic studies were undertaken in two separate locations with three discrete community‐based service networks, purposively recruited from the same aged healthcare organisation. Using a phenomological approach, 29 individual semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with managers, providers, and clients were conducted. Inductive and deductive analysis was used to identify the emerging themes and their meaning for each participant category.
Findings
Key themes were identified for each concept, but the meaning ascribed to each theme was found to differ between the participant categories. It is suggested that these results reflect participant role differences in the service co‐creation process.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited by the small sample and its relative homogeneity.
Practical implications
The findings offer service managers insights into how to engage clients in the service creation process, which in turn will affect the ultimate quality of the service that is created. They also provide information that will assist with service design, staff selection, training, and assessment.
Originality/value
This is the first study that investigates the four concepts, client orientation, client involvement, provider empowerment, and client empowerment, in the context of service co‐creation. It identifies associated abstract themes and the applied meaning differences of the service participants.
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Of matters concerning man's day‐to‐day living, none receives more attention than his diet; the foods which housewives should buy, how they should be prepared and cooked. All…
Abstract
Of matters concerning man's day‐to‐day living, none receives more attention than his diet; the foods which housewives should buy, how they should be prepared and cooked. All women's journals and most daily newspapers profess to give expert advice on diet, nutritional needs, recipes, meals, etc. Radio and television have programmes on the subject and television advertisements, when not eulogising drink of all sorts, cigarettes or soap, are largely devoted to extolling proprietary foods, without the generous addition of which to the diet, one gathers, malnutrition is unavoidable.
Mohammed Rahman and Adam Lynes
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature and extent of violent practice in the motorcycle underworld. It does this by considering the murder of Gerry Tobin, and then…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature and extent of violent practice in the motorcycle underworld. It does this by considering the murder of Gerry Tobin, and then uses the biography of the founding member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club (HAMC) for a critical analysis. The authors are interested in understanding the role of masculine honour and collective identity, and its influences in relation to violence – namely, fatal violence in the motorcycle underworld. The authors argue that motorcycle gangs are extreme examples of what Hall (2012) considers “criminal undertakers” – individuals who take “special liberties” often as a last resort.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodological approach seeks to analyse the paradigm of “masculine honour”, and how the Outlaws MC (OMC) applied this notion when executing the seemingly senseless murder of Gerry Tobin. So too, the author triangulate these findings by critically analysing the biography of the founding member of the Californian chapter of the HAMC – Sonny Barger. Further to this, a case study inevitably offers “constraints and opportunities” (Easton, 2010, p. 119). Through the process of triangulation, which is a method that utilises “multiple sources of data”, the researcher can be confident that the truth is being “conveyed as truthfully as possible” (Merriam, 1995, p. 54).
Findings
What is clear within the OB worldview is that it can only be a male dominant ideology, with no allowance for female interference (Wolf, 2008). Thus, Messerschmidt’s (1993) notion of “hegemonic masculinity” fits the male dominated subcultures of the HAMC and OMC, which therefore provides the clubs with “exclusive” masculine identities (Wolf, 2008). For organisations like the HAMC, retaliation is perceived as an alternative form of criminal justice that is compulsory to undertake in order to defend their status of honour and masculinity.
Originality/value
Based on our understanding, this is the first critical think piece that explores a UK case of homicide within the context of the motorcycle underworld. It also provides a comprehensive understanding of violent practice with the motorcycle underworld from criminological and sociological perspectives. This paper will inform readers about an overlooked and under researched underworld culture.
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In the midst of a major corporate reorganization and an ever‐changing industry landscape, how does a corporate real estateorganization successfully build enterprise alliances and…
Abstract
In the midst of a major corporate reorganization and an ever‐changing industry landscape, how does a corporate real estateorganization successfully build enterprise alliances and create integrated approaches to problem solving in order to 1) realign the real estate portfolio and 2) achieve optimal real estate portfolio efficiencies? The answer lies in the use of enterprise program management approaches to identify stakeholders and to invest in lifecycle management. This case study will examine how Sprint Enterprise Property Services successfully adopted the use of enterprise program management principles in order to achieve significant gains in process improvements, to transform a traditional work environment, and to institute a dynamic long‐term vacancy reduction plan for the corporate real estate portfolio.
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