Search results

Discusses five elements of patient‐focused care (PFC). Clarifies issues surrounding the first element ‐ aggregating patients ‐ and debates the strengths and weaknesses of the second element ‐ centralizing services in PFC units. Explores arguments for and against the third element ‐ multiskilling and cross‐training ‐ including staff activity in conventional hospitals and PFC units, in depth. Discusses the structure of PFC teams and their management. Describes the main components of the fourth PFC element ‐ integrated carepaths ‐ and explores their role in clinical audit, computerization and seamless care. Examines the costs of PFC by comparing actual with expected costs. Makes managerial, clinical, educational and research implications throughout for staff working in or with PFC units.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an organizationally oriented, patient-focused care (PFC) model's effects on care quality and work climate.

The study has a before-after (PFC implementation) design. The sample included 1,474 patients and 458 healthcare providers in six participating wards before and after PFC implementation, plus five additional randomly chosen wards, which only featured in the post-assessment.

No pre-post differences were found regarding care perceptions or provider work climate evaluations. Statistically significant improvements were noted among provider care evaluations. Using aggregate-level ward data, multiple regression analyses showed that high adherence to PFC principles and a positive work climate contributed significantly to variance among care quality ratings.

Among healthcare providers, questions related to specific PFC aspects during evenings, nights and weekends had to be dropped owing to a low response rate.

An important requirement for both practice and research is to tailor PFC to various health and social care contexts.

The study is large-scale before-after PFC model review, where patient and provider data were collected using well-established measurements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether emotion- and problem-focussed employee coping styles affect the relationship between workplace incivility and job attitudes (job satisfaction, sense of community), and whether these effects vary by gender.

Survey methodology was used to obtain self-report data from a sample of 314 working adults (90 percent Hispanic, 62 percent female) enrolled in courses at a public university.

Targets of workplace incivility experienced lower job satisfaction and sense of community at work. Employees who typically used problem-focussed coping (PFC) to respond to work stressors experienced greater negative outcomes associated with incivility. Mixed results were found for employees who typically engaged in emotion-focussed coping (EFC) at work: frequent use of avoidant coping and religious coping buffered against the impact of incivility, however, support seeking coping styles strengthened the negative outcomes associated with incivility. These effects varied by gender.

The results highlight the benefits of two EFC styles (religious coping, avoidance coping) in the context of workplace incivility. The findings also indicate limitations of PFC and support seeking coping in the context of incivility. Accordingly, the authors make suggestions for managers to facilitate employees to overcome problems of incivility.

Few studies have investigated qualities that enable employees to effectively manage incivility. Further, the role of coping styles in relation to incivility is relatively unexplored. To address these gaps, the authors examined the extent to which PFC and EFC styles impact the relationship between incivility and work attitudes.

Multi‐skilling has been the most enduring element of patient‐focused care in the UK. A recent report from the Manchester University Health Service Management Unit (HSMU) extended the multi‐skilling debate and offered a framework for changing National Health Service workforce policy along multi‐skilling lines. Examines the main HSMU issues in the light of broader empirical and other evidence. Assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to multi‐skilling. Concludes that multi‐skilling protagonists still face a number of challenges.

Value congruence (VC) (the similarity between personal and object‐relevant values (such as a product or service)) rarely appears in studies of services, despite its importance for affective commitment. Existing research also neglects moderator variables. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of VC on affective commitment to service brands and examine the moderating effects of selected psychological, situational, and demographic characteristics in two services contexts.

Four retail clothing brands and four major bank brands provide input for the empirical research. In total, 1,037 respondents completed an online questionnaire with items pertaining to VC, affective commitment, preference for consistency (PFC), switching costs (SC) and demographics.

The positive impact of VC on affective commitment is stronger when the levels of PFC and SC are higher. Demographic characteristics of consumers, including gender, age, and education, do not moderate the effect of VC on affective commitment.

Increasing VC for all consumers may not be sufficient to secure consumer affective commitment. Instead, service providers should focus on consumers with high levels of PFC or create situations with high SC.

The paper demonstrates how PFC, SC and demographics moderate the relationship between VC and affective commitment.

Simple discrete element models using PFC^2D models with bonded assemblies of particles were used to numerically simulate direct tension and block punching tests on thin spray‐on tunnel liner materials to gain insight about the liner support mechanisms. PFC^2D input parameters were calibrated such that the rupture load and elongation at rupture were similar to the laboratory test data. The calibrated model of the liner material was then used to simulate a liner around a highly stressed tunnel in rock where stresses caused extensive fracturing near the top of the tunnel. The effect of the liner was analysed by modelling the tunnel with and without the liner and showed that the liner had minimal impact on fracture propagation in the rock because of the liner's highly deformable nature. However, the liner was able to retain the fractured rock in place.

Drawing on the author’s personal experience within the UK National Health Service, outlines at the macro level what information is needed, and why, in facilities management. Suggests that top‐level data gathering is a priority, describes the processes required, and finally considers the advantages of sharing information with competitors and others.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the cognitive appraisals, coping choices and behavioral responses by business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals confronting the acutely stressful experience of losing a customer, and their pursuit of justice in the win-back process, influences reacquisition outcomes. The paper further examines the role of sales experience as a moderator between coping choices and successful win back.

In all, 98 critical incidents were reported by sales professionals from B2B firms across various industries. NVivo 9, content analysis and logistic regression were used to analyze the data.

The results show that problem-focused coping (PFC) and pro-active responses positively affect win-back outcome. By contrast, emotion-focused coping (EFC) and re-active responses have a negative association with customer reacquisition. The findings also show that sales experience moderates the relationship between levels of EFC and win-back outcomes. Specifically, for sales professionals with low levels of EFC, sales experience helps improve chances of winning back lost customers. But for sales professionals using higher levels of EFC, more sales experience decreases win-back probability. Additionally, the findings show that procedural, interactional and distributive justice all contribute to successful customer reacquisition.

The few published studies of how B2B sales professionals deal with customer defections reveal a mixture of bereavement and drivenness in striving for new accounts. The authors’ focus and findings on the use of PFC and EFC strategies, justice mechanisms and the uneven role of experience in responding to this stressful context suggests that there is much to be gained from additional research. Specifically, probes into how sales professionals may be inadvertently skewed to EFC behaviors by either overly simplistic training systems, learning- versus performance-based incentives or their experience with prior customer defections.

The findings highlight the importance of PFC strategies and the delivery of procedural, interactional and distributive justice strategies to productively adapt to customer defections, activate switch back behavior and win back lost customers. Sales force training systems need to address the increased churning in B2B markets and integrate win-back procedures in sales training programs so that sales professionals do not default to EFC and/or strive for new accounts when facing the stress of customer defection.

The findings contribute to customer defection management and sales literature by integrating coping and justice theories in exploring sales professionals’ cognitive appraisals and coping responses to the acute stress of losing a current customer.

The theoretical basis for this case is a focus on ethical decision-making based upon a decision-making tree proposed by Bagley et al. (2003). Once multiple options are determined as ethical, integrating authentic leadership into the decision-making process can help leaders made difficult decisions.

The authors conducted extensive research through IBISWorld, EBSCOhost, and academic journals to review ethical decision-making and authentic leadership. The authors successfully piloted the case with over 100 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in leadership courses.

The case describes an ethical decision a young commanding officer must make. A soldier under their leadership has been charged with an inappropriate relationship with a minor. The officer must decide between two actions that are legal within the military justice system. Each decision has ramifications that will significantly affect the organization.

The case is best taught in undergraduate and graduate leadership courses. Course participants do not need a detailed understanding of military leadership or military law to apply fundamental concepts.

The success ofIn recent years, there has been significant interest in the application of continuous quality improvement (CQI) and total quality management (TQM), and patient‐focused care (PFC) in health care organisations around the globe. The hospital industry has substantially embraced the concepts of CQI and TQM with the belief that these concepts and programmes will lead to an improvement in both the quality and efficiency with which health services are delivered. The objective of this article is to achieve better outcomes in health care services with fewer resources by studying the implementation of patient‐focused care in the health care provision context and particularly in the area of pharmaceutical care management as an integrated process in the delivery of health care in a hospital setting. The changes in health care provision have in many instances meant that the provision of pharmaceutical services needed re‐assessing.