Mediators of marginalisation in discharge planning with older adults

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 1747-1769 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVELYNE DUROCHER ◽  
BARBARA E. GIBSON ◽  
SUSAN RAPPOLT

ABSTRACTReturning home or moving to a more supportive setting upon discharge from inpatient health-care services can have a tremendous impact on the lives of older adults and their families. Institutional concerns with patient safety and expedience can overshadow health-care professionals' commitments to collaborative discharge planning. In light of many competing demands and agendas, it can be unclear what is driving discharge-planning processes and outcomes. This paper presents the results of a study examining discharge planning in an older adult rehabilitation unit in a Canadian urban setting. Using microethnographic case studies, we explored the perspectives of older adults, family members and health-care professionals. Drawing on concepts of relational autonomy to guide the analysis, we found that discourses of ageing-as-decline, beliefs privileging health-care professionals' expertise and conventions guiding discharge planning intersected to marginalise older adult patients in discharge-planning decision making. Discharge planning in the research setting was driven by norms of ‘protecting physical safety’ at the expense of older adults’ self-declared interests and values. Such practices resulted in frequent recommendations of 24-hour care, which have significant personal, social and financial implications for older adults and their families, and ultimately might undermine clients' or health-care systems' aims. The analysis revealed social, political and institutional biases that diminish the rights and autonomy of older adults.

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Symone A. McKinnon ◽  
Breanna M. Holloway ◽  
Maya S. Santoro ◽  
April C. May ◽  
Terry A. Cronan

Background and Purpose: The projected increase in chronically ill older adults may overburden the healthcare system and compromise the receipt of quality and coordinated health care services. Healthcare advocates (HCAs) may help to alleviate the burden associated with seeking and receiving appropriate health care. We examined whether having dementia or depression, along with hypertension and arthritis, or having no comorbid medical conditions, and being an older adult, affected the perceived likelihood of hiring an HCA to navigate the health care system. Method: Participants (N = 1,134), age 18 or older, read a vignette and imagined themselves as an older adult with either a mood or cognitive disorder, and comorbid medical conditions or as otherwise being physically healthy. They were then asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their perceived likelihood of hiring an HCA. Results: Participants who imagined themselves as having dementia reported a greater likelihood of hiring an HCA than participants who imagined themselves as having depression (p < .001). Conclusion: It is imperative that health care professionals attend to the growing and ongoing needs of older adults living with chronic conditions, and HCAs could play an important role in meeting those needs.


Author(s):  
Gørill Haugan ◽  
Monica Eriksson

AbstractThe Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the vulnerability of our health care systems as well as our societies. During the year of 2020, we have witnessed how whole societies globally have been in a turbulent state of transformation finding strategies to manage the difficulties caused by the pandemic. At first glance, the health promotion perspective might seem far away from handling the serious impacts caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as health promotion is about enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, paradoxically health promotion seems to be ever more important in times of crisis and pandemics. Probably, in the future, pandemics will be a part of the global picture along with the non-communicable diseases. These facts strongly demand the health care services to reorient in a health promoting direction.The IUHPE Global Working Group on Salutogenesis suggests that health promotion competencies along with a reorientation of professional leadership towards salutogenesis, empowerment and participation are required. More specifically, the IUHPE Group recommends that the overall salutogenic model of health and the concept of SOC should be further advanced and applied beyond the health sector, followed by the design of salutogenic interventions and change processes in complex systems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilian Keene Boye ◽  
Christian Backer Mogensen ◽  
Tine Mechlenborg ◽  
Frans Boch Waldorff ◽  
Pernille Tanggaard Andersen

Abstract Background Half of the older persons in high-income counties are affected with multimorbidity and the prevalence increases with older age. To cope with both the complexity of multimorbidity and the ageing population health care systems needs to adapt to the aging population and improve the coordination of long-term services. The objectives of this review were to synthezise how older people with multimorbidity experiences integrations of health care services and to identify barriers towards continuity of care when multimorbid. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted in February 2018 by in Scopus, Embase, Cinahl, and Medline using the PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria: studies exploring patients’ point of view, ≥65 and multi-morbid. Quality assessment was conducted using COREQ. Thematic synthesis was done. Results Two thousand thirty studies were identified, with 75 studies eligible for full text, resulting in 9 included articles, of generally accepted quality. Integration of health care services was successful when the patients felt listened to on all the aspects of being individuals with multimorbidity and when they obtained help from a care coordinator to prioritize their appointments. However, they felt frustrated when they did not have easy access to their health providers, when they were not listened to, and when they felt they were discharged too early. These frustrations were also identified as barriers to continuity of care. Conclusions Health care systems needs to adapt to people with multimorbidity and find solutions on ways to create flexible systems that are able to help older patients with multimorbidity, meet their individual needs and their desire to be involved in decisions regarding their care. A Care coordinator may be a solution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry J. Boyle ◽  
Kieran Mervyn

Purpose Many nations are focussing on health care’s Triple Aim (quality, overall community health and reduced cost) with only moderate success. Traditional leadership learning programmes have been based on a taught curriculum, but the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate more modern approaches through procedures and tools. Design/methodology/approach This study evolved from grounded and activity theory foundations (using semi-structured interviews with ten senior healthcare executives and qualitative analysis) which describe obstructions to progress. The study began with the premise that quality and affordable health care are dependent upon collaborative innovation. The growth of new leaders goes from skills to procedures and tools, and from training to development. Findings This paper makes “frugal innovation” recommendations which while not costly in a financial sense, do have practical and social implications relating to the Triple Aim. The research also revealed largely externally driven health care systems under duress suffering from leadership shortages. Research limitations/implications The study centred primarily on one Canadian community health care services’ organisation. Since healthcare provision is place-based (contextual), the findings may not be universally applicable, maybe not even to an adjacent community. Practical implications The paper dismisses outdated views of the synonymity of leadership and management, while encouraging clinicians to assume leadership roles. Originality/value This paper demonstrates how health care leadership can be developed and sustained.


Author(s):  
Agya Mahat ◽  
David Citrin ◽  
Hima Bista

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become increasingly popular models of collaboration in the global health arena to deliver, scale, and evaluate health care services. While many of these initiatives are multicountry, large-scale partnerships, smaller NGOs play increasingly central roles in new forms of privatization. This article draws on our collective experiences working in a PPP between the nongovernmental organization Possible and the Ministry of Health in Nepal to ethnographically examine the fragile and contested nature of these arrangements in the Nepali context, amidst an increasingly privatized health care landscape that is resulting in widespread discontent and distrust throughout the country, as well as financial hardship. We discuss the Possible PPP as one approach that simultaneously seeks to strengthen public-sector health care systems, yet still taps into some of the promises, anxieties, and blind spots – such as the broader social determinants of health – inherent in new forms of public-private global health work.


Author(s):  
Austyn Roseborough ◽  
Roger Hudson

Canada represents a global leader in refugee resettlement, having embraced an identity of multiculturalism that promotes the acceptance of newcomers. A crucial factor in facilitating post-arrival integration of newcomers into Canadian society is the maintenance of good health through the provision of adequate health care services. Throughout the past century, there has been an increase in the number of refugees in Canada, beginning largely in the post-World War period and extending into the second half of the twentieth century. This influx has required the development of health care systems and coverage specific to unique post-arrival medical needs of refugees. The history of refugee health care has been shaped by both policy and advocacy on behalf of refugees, resulting in a larger breadth of coverage today than ever before. This article summarizes the evolution of health care services provided to refugees, challenges that particular populations of refugees have faced in accessing care, and suggestions for continued improvements in refugee access to health care services.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Petracca ◽  
Oriana Ciani ◽  
Maria Cucciniello ◽  
Rosanna Tarricone

UNSTRUCTURED A common development observed during the COVID-19 pandemic is the renewed reliance on digital health technologies. Prior to the pandemic, the uptake of digital health technologies to directly strengthen public health systems had been unsatisfactory; however, a relentless acceleration took place within health care systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, digital health technologies could not be prescinded from the organizational and institutional merits of the systems in which they were introduced. The Italian National Health Service is strongly decentralized, with the national government exercising general stewardship and regions responsible for the delivery of health care services. Together with the substantial lack of digital efforts previously, these institutional characteristics resulted in delays in the uptake of appropriate solutions, territorial differences, and issues in engaging the appropriate health care professionals during the pandemic. An in-depth analysis of the organizational context is instrumental in fully interpreting the contribution of digital health during the pandemic and providing the foundation for the digital reconstruction of what is to come after.


Author(s):  
David Pilgrim

The way in which mental illness is conceptualized varies significantly across cultures. This chapter will discuss how mental illness is understood in different cultural contexts, focusing on local perspectives of the need for coercive interactions with the person who is identified as ill. It will also consider how such coercion takes place. Despite local variation, many coercive practices (at least those occurring in health-care systems) will take place within the context of a legal framework. Because of this, developments in mental health laws will be described in broad terms, considering both the evolution of such legislation and its application. This chapter will focus both on health-care services and on the many coercive practices that are deemed socially legitimate that occur outside the remit of services and legal regimes. The latter may indeed be where coercive practices vary the most.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mor Saban ◽  
Tal Shachar

An outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that started in Wuhan, China, has spread quickly, with cases confirmed in 180 countries with broad impact on all health care systems. Currently, the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine or any definitive medication has led to increased use of non-pharmaceutical interventions, aimed at reducing contact rates in the population and thereby transmission of the virus, especially social distancing. These social distancing guidelines indirectly create two isolated populations at high-risk: the chronically ill and voluntary isolated persons who had contact with a verified patient or person returning from abroad. In this concept paper we describe the potential risk of these populations leading to an 80% reduction in total Emergency Department (ED) visits, including patients with an acute condition. In conclusion, alternative medical examination solutions so far do not provide adequate response to the at-risk population. The healthcare system must develop and offer complementary solutions that will enable access to health services even during these difficult times.


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