Health care support workers (HSWs) play a fundamental role in international health care systems, and yet they remain largely invisible. Despite this, the number of HSWs is growing fast as governments strive to combat illness and address social care issues in a world of finite resources.
This original collection analyses the global experience of HSWs in the UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Portugal, Sweden and The Netherlands. Leading academics examine issues including the interface of HSWs with the health professions, regulatory practice risks, employment challenges and the dilemmas of an ageing population. Crucial future policy recommendations are also made for a world becoming increasingly dependent on HSWs.
analyse from a sociological or wider social science perspective the role of support workers in the health care labour force in these or other terms. This edited collection attempts to do just that from a largely neo-Weberian theoretical perspective which examines professions in terms of the various forms of social closure that they have gained in a competitive market, underwritten by the state – based on legally underpinned and exclusionary registers of practitioners protecting them against outsiders ( Saks 2010 ). The achievement of this position, which brings
The allied health professions have gained legitimacy through the pursuit of research evidence and the standardisation of practice. Yet there remains very little analysis or understanding of these professions.
Adopting theory from the sociology of health professions, this unique text explores the sociological, economic, political and philosophical pressures that have shaped the professions. Drawing on case studies and examples from occupations including optometrists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists to emerging vocations, including pedorthists and allied health assistants, this book offers an innovative comparison of allied health professions in Australia and Britain.
By telling the story of their past, this original book prepares the allied health professions for a new and different future.
There are significant variations in how healthcare systems and health professionals are regulated globally. One feature that they increasingly have in common is an emphasis on the value of including members of the public in quality assurance processes. While many argue that this will help better serve the public interest, others question how far the changing regulatory reform agenda is still dominated by medical interests.
Bringing together leading academics worldwide, this collection compares and critically examines the ways in which different countries are regulating healthcare in general, and health professions in particular, in the interest of users and the wider public. It is the first book in the Sociology of Health Professions series.
Austerity’s impacts on the healthcare, social care and education professions are under the spotlight in this important book.
From scarcer resources to greater stresses, and falling training budgets to rising risks, it charts how policies and cuts have compromised workers’ ability to undertake their professional roles. It combines research and practice experience to assess the extent of de-professionalisation in recent years and how workers have responded.
This book is a vital review of how austerity has resculpted our notions of professionalism.
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Today, production processes have become fragmented with a range of activities divided among firms and workers across borders. These global value chains are being strongly promoted by international organisations, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, but social and political backlash is mounting in a growing variety of forms.
This ambitious volume brings together academics and activists from Europe to address the social and environmental imbalances of global production. Thinking creatively about how to reform the current economic system, this book will be essential reading for those interested in building sustainable alternatives at local, regional and global levels.
Semiotics provides key analytical tools to understand the creation and reproduction of meaning in social life. Although some fields have productively incorporated semiotic models, sociology still needs to engage with semiosis mediation.
Written by a diverse group of authors in interpretive sociology, this ambitious volume asks what the relationship between meaning systems and action is, how we can describe culture and which roles we assign to language, social processes and cognition in a sociological context. Contributors offer empirical research that not only outlines the conceptual issues at stake, but also demonstrates ‘how to do things’ with semiotics through case studies.
Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for scholars interested in the connection between semiotics and sociology.
This timely comparative study assesses the role of medical doctors in reforming publicly funded health services in England and Canada.
Respected authors from health and legal backgrounds on both sides of the Atlantic consider how the high status of the profession uniquely influences reforms. With summaries of developments in models of care, and the participation of doctors since the inception of publicly funded healthcare systems, they ask whether professionals might be considered allies or enemies of policy-makers.
With insights for future health policy and research, the book is an important contribution to debates about the complex relationship between doctors and the systems in which they practice.
Carrie Manning’s illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the U.S. have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy.
Tax structures embed, and reproduce, an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that produce unintended consequences that are rarely traced back to state and local revenue models. This book combines historical American political development with the study of state formation. It provides a clear-eyed investigation into the past, present, and future of the social contract between America’s local governments and citizens.
This original and innovative book opens up new perspectives in health policy debate, examining the emerging international trends in the governance of health professions and the significance of national contexts for the changing health workforce.
In bringing together research from a wide range of continental European countries as well as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the contributors highlight different arenas of governance, as well as the various players involved in the policy process. They expand the public debate on professional governance - hitherto mainly limited to medical self-regulation - to encompass a broad span of health care providers, from nurses and midwives to alternative therapists and health support workers.
The book provides new data and geopolitical perspectives in the debate over how to govern health care. It helps to better understand both the enabling conditions for, and the barriers to, making professionals more accountable to the interests of a changing public.
This book will be a valuable resource for students at an undergraduate and postgraduate level, particularly for health programmes, sociology of professions and comparative health policy, but also for academics, researchers and managers working in health care.
