Search results

There is mounting evidence that working in the NHS is very stressful. To reduce the effects of stress on the health and functioning of hospital staff, counselling services have been introduced, but seldom evaluated. This study evaluates the outcome of such a service for the first 100 staff seen. The most frequent problems were work induced stress, depression, anxiety and relationship problems. Most staff were seen for three or fewer sessions, with 50 per cent requiring no further help. Most perceived the sessions as very helpful, both immediately and six months later. Significant improvements were found in self‐reported anxiety, depression, satisfaction with self and life outside work and functioning at work and outside. These were maintained at six months follow‐up, although functioning outside work was no longer significantly improved. Problems of evaluation of this kind of counselling service are addressed, with suggestions about establishing a control group.

Focuses on stress and stress reduction with reference to the Health Service. Details the results of a questionnaire survey into stress management carried out in a London teaching hospital.

The purpose of this study was to determine if perceptions that women and men hold toward careers in information technology (IT) and toward women working in IT create potential barriers that may prevent women managers from pursuing careers in IT.

A field study was designed to test the hypotheses. The subjects were graduate students pursuing either an MBA or IT management degree.

The results revealed that males had greater self‐efficacy for IT occupations, greater passion for computing, and less positive attitudes toward capabilities of women in IT. Our prediction that career barriers would intensify for women who chose an IT management option was not supported. These findings suggest that traditional work role expectations concerning women's efficacy for careers in IT still persist.

This research was limited by its focus on subjects in the early stages of a management career. To gain a better understanding of the barriers that women face in IT career fields, longitudinal studies are needed to track these barriers throughout the career development process.

If organisations want to attract, retain, and advance women managers in IT fields, they must proactively address gender role biases and create work environments that build self‐efficacy expectations for women, as well as for men.

Much of the research on career barriers women face in IT is based on qualitative studies and anecdotal evidence. This study provides empirical evidence that barriers still exist for women in IT despite the enhanced demand for IT professionals and managers over the past decade.

Describes the six stages involved in developing a satisfaction survey for out‐patients attending a London teaching hospital, using existing expertise within the organization. These are: information gathering; item selection; the pilot; analysing the results; questionnaire amendment; and reporting back results to the organization. Shows the feasibility of developing satisfaction questionnaires using expertise within a hospital but also points out the difficulty of getting a satisfactorily high response rate and suggests means of improving this. Also highlights the greater dissatisfaction with services experienced by non‐whites compared with whites.

Previous research has identified a need for greater clarity regarding the functions of multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings in UK community mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to identify the functions of these meetings by systematically reviewing both primary research and academic discussion papers.

Papers relating to adult community mental health teams (CMHTs) in the UK and published between September 1999 and February 2014 were reviewed and appraised using NICE quality checklists. The search was broad in scope to include both general CMHTs and specialist CMHTs such as early intervention psychosis services and forensic mental health teams. A thematic synthesis of the findings was performed to develop an overarching thematic framework of the reported functions of MDT meetings.

None of the 4,046 studies identified directly investigated the functions of MDT meetings. However, 49 mentioned functions in passing. These functions were categorised into four thematic domains: discussing the care of individual patients, teamwork, team management and learning and development. Several papers reported a lack of clarity about the purpose of MDT meetings and the roles of different team members which hindered effective collaboration.

Without clearly agreed objectives for MDT meetings, monitoring their effectiveness is problematic. Unwarranted variation in their functioning may undermine the quality of care.

This is the first systematic review to investigate the functions of CMHT MDT meetings in the UK. The findings highlight a need for empirical research to establish how MDT meetings are being used so that their effectiveness can be understood, monitored and evaluated.

This study attempts to move beyond the “congruence assumption” surrounding top management team (TMT) demography by exploring the intervening processes that link TMT diversity and organizational performance.

Using Fiol's concept of unified diversity and employing an information processing perspective of strategic decision‐making, this article proposes a model that incorporates both moderating and mediating influences; and then tests the hypotheses using data from specific strategic decisions faced by 85 top‐level decision‐making teams within the health care industry.

Evidence was found to support the expectation that goal consensus moderates the relationship between informational diversity and decision quality within the management teams. In addition, team member collaboration was found to partially mediate this effect. Research limitations/implications – The retrospective nature of the data collection captured the essence of the decision‐making process over time, but future research using longitudinal designs that include different types of industries is needed to confirm the validity of the findings.

The practical implications of this study point towards a need for managers to set in motion both divergent and convergent thinking during the strategic decision‐making process. The findings indicate that if managers want to reap the benefits of teams with members from different functional and educational backgrounds, they must instigate some aspect of shared framing among team members, such as consensus on broad organizational goals.

This research identified relevant contingency and mediating variables that help to explain the equivocal results of previous studies attempting to link top management team demography to organizational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore physical and mental health patients’ experience of multidisciplinary team (MDT) care and decision making in order to highlight factors underlying effective care and to identify areas in which patient experience could be improved.

Totally, 12 MDTs within the North Thames area participated; the authors recruited 13 patients from physical health MDTs and seven patients from mental health MDTs. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with each participant and thematically analysed the transcripts.

The study found a marked contrast in patient experience: physical health patients emphasised their faith in the judgement of MDT clinicians, described experiencing high quality care and expressed a strong preference not to attend MDT meetings; mental health patients highlighted a range of negative experiences, were frequently sceptical about their diagnosis, and expressed a desire to have greater involvement in the decisions directing their care.

It was necessary to revise the initial target of interviewing six patients per MDT due to recruitment difficulties.

In order to improve care, mental health MDTs should focus on promoting a shared understanding of illness by increasing the transparency of the diagnostic process. Key factors underlying effective MDT care in physical health services include enabling patients to determine their level of involvement in decision making and ensuring patients have a clear understanding of their care plan.

The paper highlights the importance of mental health MDTs focusing on developing a shared understanding of illness with their patients.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

In this second decade of the 21st century, Hispanic women in academia continue to lag behind their White counterparts; namely, U.S. Department of Education 2003 data revealed that 1.8% Hispanic women occupied administrative or executive posts at doctoral research universities in comparison with 3.7% of White women (Evans & Chun, 2007). Undoubtedly, Hispanic women administrators in higher education represent the faces of gender and ethnicity and, above all, they are instrumental in facilitating career paths for present and future generations of Hispanic students. Toward this end, this review of literature will provide a framework for the discussion of women's leadership practices and administrative roles, in relation to a number of salient factors, which include Hispanics as a group and prevailing ideologies surrounding this ethnic group; differences among the various Hispanic groups including trajectory and language; self-efficacy as a construct and its relationship to ethnicity and culture; women and the hidden curriculum phenomenon; Discourse theory and sociocultural mechanisms.