Search results

This article investigates how medical specialists as professionals and elective cosmetic surgery tourists as consumers relationally negotiate decisions within the cosmetic surgery clinic. Drawing on a Goffmanian approach, this article explores the processual social structures that shape consumer logics in the clinic as a social space and as a type of professional institution.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in cosmetic surgery clinics in South Korea.

This article identifies two genres of professional strategies (spatial arrangements and dramaturgical performances) that are leveraged by medical specialists to assert control over and persuade consumers to purchase cosmetic surgery.

The valorization of surgery captured in this article suggests that surgical modifications may serve as another vehicle for entrenching class inequality between those able and those unable to afford surgery.

This article offers recommendations for future policymaking in terms of the regulatory oversight of the consumer profiles eligible for surgery and the marketing practices of clinics.

This article offers a micro-level account of how the high-risk good of cosmetic surgery is sold by medical specialists in charismatic and affective bids to enhance their legitimacy, authority and trust.

The global Covid-19 pandemic is posing considerable challenges for governments throughout the world and has and will have a significant influence on the shape of peoples social and economic life and wellbeing in the short and longer term. This opinion paper discusses the current health policy response adopted in England to control or manage the epidemic and identifies the key sociological and political influences which have shaped these policies. Drawing on the theoretical approach set out in his recent book, which emphasises the interplay of powerful structural and economic interest groups, the author will consider the influence of the key players. Government policy has tied itself to scientific and medical evidence and protecting the NHS so the key roles of the medical profession, public health scientific community and NHS management and their respective and relative powerful influences will be discussed. The government needs the support of the public if their policies are to be successful, so how have the government addressed maintaining public trust in this “crisis” and how much trust do the public have in the government and what has influenced it? The strong emphasis on social distancing and social isolation in the national government policy response to Covid-19 has placed an increasing public reliance on the traditional and social media for sources of information so how the media has framed the policy will be considered. One policy aim is for an effective vaccine and the influence of the drug industry in its development is discussed. Finally, the role of the state will be discussed and what has shaped its social and economic policies.

The resource crisis in healthcare can be alleviated by engaging external stakeholders and resources in healthcare delivery. The authors use value and open innovation concepts to understand what motivates the stakeholders to join the healthcare innovation ecosystem and what value such an ecosystem brings to healthcare.

A systematic literature review following the PRISMA framework method was applied to reach the research objective. Out of a total of 509 identified articles published till 2021, 25 were selected as relevant for this review.

Six categories of actors were identified, including innovation intermediaries, which were so far neglected in the healthcare innovation literature. Furthermore, patients, healthcare providers, innovation suppliers, investors and influencers were described. The authors also distinguished internal and external stakeholders. The authors show why and how open innovation projects contribute to involving external stakeholders and resources in healthcare delivery by contributing to patient autonomy, relationship building, knowledge transfer, improving collaborative mindset and culture, advancing know-how and bringing additional finances.

This article is the first one to systematically describe the value of open innovation in healthcare. The authors challenge the positivist approach in value presented by value-based healthcare. The authors show how openness contributes to addressing the resource crisis by involving new stakeholders and resources in the care delivery process.

This paper explores the reasons why Indonesia must have legal regulations to provide protection and guarantees for health workers in carrying out the profession in overcoming corona virus disease (COVID-19). This paper also explains the legal regulations as the foundation for today’s medical workers’ protection. This paper also aims at providing an ideal legal construction that safeguards the rights and obligations of health workers in overcoming COVID-19.

In this paper, the author used qualitative research methods with a socio-legal approach. The data were obtained through literature study and analysis of laws and regulations through the socio-legal method.

Various challenges and professional risks taken by health workers in dealing with COVID-19 derive from several factors, such as shortage of personal protective equipment, ineffective implementation of informed consent from the patients and the negative stigma spreading in the community. Moreover, the current legal regulation has not particularly modulated the protection of health workers, relying only on available articles that are actually irrelevant to be applied in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research is focused on problems faced by health workers in combating COVID-19 and law concessions to ensure their protection.

The final results of this research will be useful for The House of Representatives (DPR), the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia (Kemenkes RI) and the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) in establishing legal and regulatory construction for the protection of health workers in tackling COVID-19.

This research aims at strengthening legal protections for the health workers so that their rights and obligations are well guaranteed.

This paper proposes an ideal legal construction for the protection of health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is currently still not specifically and rigidly regulated, to realize a guaranteed and sustainable life for health workers.

Various health systems are challenged by a multifaceted crisis of increased service demand and workforce shortages. The effects are devastating and may end up in decreased access to care, poor quality of patient care and extreme demands on the workforce. The introduction of the physician assistant (PA) profession provided an avenue to address such challenges in several countries. In Germany, the integration of PAs has been proceeding slowly.

To understand the integration of the profession in Germany, we conducted 15 expert interviews to reveal how the PA profession is perceived among healthcare experts as well as the barriers and facilitators of integration in inpatient care.

Our results highlight a generally positive perception of PAs, particularly in terms of workload relief and bridging the gap between healthcare professionals. Nonetheless, barriers include resistance from healthcare workers unfamiliar with the PA role, while workforce shortages and collaborative teamwork facilitate integration.

These findings lay the groundwork for potential integration-enhancing strategies in Germany.

Job competency frameworks are based on the listing skills required for a job. The assumption is that if a candidate is presumed to have the skills, then the candidate should be able to do the job. Thus, employers hope to identify prospective employees having the required skills. However, this may differ from knowing whether the employee is ready to be trusted to do the job activities with minimal or no supervision. The authors pose the question how employers might know about the capability of prospective employees to perform the job activities for which the employees are being hired.

In health professions education, a job activity-based framework has been developed called “entrustable professional activities” (EPAs, activities to be entrusted). This paper reviews the job activity framework and EPAs used in medical education, considering how this might support preparation for work in other sectors of the labor market.

The authors describe the EPA framework, some implementation issues and how EPAs lead to a type of microcredential being awarded to individuals as the individuals demonstrate that the individuals can be entrusted with specific job activities.

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate that a medical education model could potentially be adopted by other industries to provide employers with information regarding the ability of a prospective employee in performing the job activities required. Such an approach would address employer's concerns about the job readiness of potential employees.

Doctors are more likely to suffer from mental illness in comparison to the wider population. This is particularly true for junior doctors, who are at increased risk in comparison to their senior colleagues. This study aims to identify whether junior doctors in North London are comfortable discussing mental health problems with their peers and supervisors and to compare how comfortable they are discussing mental and physical health problems.

An anonymous online questionnaire was designed with demographic data, multiple-choice questions and free-text boxes. This was distributed via email to core psychiatry trainees and foundation doctors in North London. Drug- and alcohol-related disorders were excluded from our definition of mental illness in this survey, as these are reportable to the General Medical Council.

A total of 51 junior doctors responded to the survey. The respondents were significantly more likely to discuss mental health problems with their peers in comparison to their supervisors. They were also less likely to discuss mental health problems in comparison to physical health problems with their peers, supervisors or general practitioner. Qualitative analysis of the free-text comments elucidated several themes including the stigmatisation of mental health.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no prior research in the UK comparing the attitudes of junior doctors towards physical and mental ill-health. The questionnaire highlights the continued stigma towards mental health within the medical profession. The difference in attitudes towards physical and mental ill-health has important implications for the training and well-being of junior doctors.

This paper aims to examine the marketing strategies designed by three innovative early 1900s food companies. It traces the coordination of these businesses’ research funding, advertising, direct mail and promotional tactics to show how they intersected and impacted consumers and health professionals in the period when scientists were first able to quantify the relationship between good health and food. The paper analyzes internal company documents, advertisements and marketing materials from Knox Gelatine, Borden and Sunkist.

Research for this paper benefited from the author’s unlimited access to the private documents of the Knox Gelatine Company and its executives. These documents were analyzed chronologically and thematically. They chronicled the company’s attempts to influence the medical world and the ways it cultivated home economists. The paper also used publicly available digitized documents from Sunkist and Borden. The paper would benefit from further detailed analysis of these documents to parse Knox’s targeting by race and ethnicity.

In the 1920s, Knox, Borden and Sunkist developed a marketing strategy which leveraged a new class of experts – the hundreds of thousands of medical professionals, home economists, teachers and government agents who advised American women. By distributing specific laboratory research on the nutritional benefits of their products to this emerging class of health professionals and the consumers who trusted them, these companies developed relationships with opinion leaders designed specifically to influence product sales.

This research benefited from access to the private documents of Knox Gelatine Company which divulge the company’s attempts to influence the medical world and cultivate home economists. The paper would benefit from further analysis of these documents to parse the company’s targeting by race and ethnicity as well as a deeper comparison to companies that tried to work with health professionals unsuccessfully and companies that adopted this tactic in the household products or tobacco area. Opportunities also exist to do a fuller analysis of variations in food marketing by rural versus urban as well as race.

By reconstructing the sequencing and content of these three companies’ 1920s marketing strategies, this research uncovers a form of early 20th century food marketing directed at health and science professionals which has been neglected in advertising histories.