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The translation of research into practice is currently a high‐profile issue in the NHS. A number of regions have undertaken work in this area. Reports on a project that is part of the Anglia and Oxford Regions′s “Getting Research into Practice” (GRiP) initiative. The work focuses on the use of steroids in pre‐term delivery, a procedure that medical evidence suggests can reduce neo‐natal mortality and morbidity. Presents a number of findings which suggest that getting research into practice does not merely rest on the availability of well‐researched evidence.

The European Community is currently experimenting with the use of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) and other patient classification systems. Disease Staging is a clinically based classification system which focuses on the dimensions of severity of illness and can be implemented using the same data required for the DRGs. Reports a pilot study in the Emilia‐Romagna region of Italy, where data were analysed from three hospitals for patients hospitalized in 1988 with four diseases: coronary artery disease/acute myocardial infarction, cholecystitis, appendicitis, and diabetes mellitus. The same patients were classified using DRGs and Disease Staging, and the Disease Staging methodology was used to analyse issues of timeliness of hospital admission, length of stay patterns, and in‐hospital mortality rates.

[There are thousands of lists of books on special subjects, and nothing more is attempted here than to indicate the most useful. For other lists and bibliographies, reference must be made to the works in Section I. The catalogues of special libraries and the numerous lists of books on special subjects contributed to professional magazines must also be sought for there.]

Throughout the history of commerce, individuals have searched for informational advantages that will lead to their enrichment. In a time of global capital markets, 24 hours a day trading opportunities, and a professional services corps of market experts, informational advantages are pursued by virtually every market participant. This paper examines one of the most vilified informational advantages in modern capital markets: insider trading. In the USA during the 1980s, insider trading scandals occupied the front pages of not only the trade papers, but also quotidian tabloids. Assailed for its unfairness and characterised by some as thievery, insider trading incidents increased calls for stricter regulation of the marketplace and its participants. In the aftermath of the spectacular insider trading litigation in the USA in the late 1980s, many foreign states began to re‐evaluate the effectiveness of their own regulatory structures. In large part, this reassessment was not the produce of domestic demand, but constituted a response to American agitation for increased regulation of insider trading.

The aim of this action research was to explore, from a workforce and a patient/carer perspective, the skills and the capacity required to deliver integrated care and to inform future workforce development and planning in a new integrated care system in England.

Semi-structured interviews and focus groups with primary, community, acute care, social care and voluntary care, frontline and managerial staff and with patients and carers receiving these services were undertaken. Data were explored using framework analysis.

Analysis revealed three overarching themes: achieving teamwork and integration, managing demands on capacity and capability and delivering holistic and user-centred care. An organisational development (OD) process was developed as part of the action research process to facilitate the large-scale workforce changes taking place.

This study did not consider workforce development and planning challenges for nursing and care staff in residential, nursing care homes or domiciliary services. This part of the workforce is integral to the care pathways for many patients, and in line with the current emerging national focus on this sector, these groups require further examination. Further, data explore service users' and carers' perspectives on workforce skills. It proved challenging to recruit patient and carer respondents for the research due to the nature of their illnesses.

Many of the required skills already existed within the workforce. The OD process facilitated collaborative learning to enhance skills; however, workforce planning across a whole system has challenges in relation to data gathering and management. Ensuring a focus on workforce development and planning is an important part of integrated care development.

This study has implications for social and voluntary sector organisations in respect of inter-agency working practices, as well as the identification of workforce development needs and potential for informing subsequent cross-sector workforce planning arrangements and communication.

This paper helps to identify the issues and benefits of implementing person-centred, integrated teamworking and the implications for workforce planning and OD approaches.