Access and utilization of health services by migrant domestic helpers in Cyprus: the role of the employer

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marios Kantaris ◽  
Mamas Theodorou ◽  
Daphne Kaitelidou

Purpose The dominant role of the employer regarding the access and use of healthcare services by migrant domestic helpers (MDH) often has a negative impact on healthcare provision for migrants in Cyprus. Research relating to the perceptions of MDH employers remains scarce. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of employers on the access and use of healthcare services by their MDH. Design/methodology/approach Three studies were carried out using semi-structured interviews with MDH (n=13) and employers of MDH (n=12) and structured questionnaires with MDH (n=625). Content analysis for qualitative findings was carried out using QSR Nvivo 10 and for quantitative using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 17. Findings Findings provide information about migrant health needs from different views leading to improved documentation via multiple triangulation. Employers play a key gatekeeping role but are not in position to provide sufficient information and guidance to their MDH. MDH reported a need for health services which was not met (18 percent), attributing this to their employers not granting them permission. Originality/value The role of the employer is critical and has an impact on the quality of care provided to this migrant group. The involvement of the employer in MDH health matters functions as a barrier. A significant gap exists between employers and MDH regarding the health needs of the latter.

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 681-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrice Van Cleemput

Gypsy Travellers have the poorest health of any ethnic group in the population; they also have an inverse relationship between their health needs and access to healthcare services. This article aims to explain the reasons for such stark health inequality, to identify the specific health needs of Gypsy Travellers, and to describe the role of the GP in meeting those needs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Chu ◽  
Kimberley McNeill ◽  
Karen M. Wright ◽  
Anthony Hague ◽  
Tracy Wilkins

Purpose – From 2012, all high-secure forensic mental health services in England began operating a policy of confining patients to their locked bedrooms overnight to increase service efficiency and reduce costs. The purpose of this paper is to assess the views of staff and patients concerning the policy and examine the specific impact of the policy on patients. Design/methodology/approach – Measures of patients’ sleep hygiene, patients’ behaviour, ward atmosphere, engagement with therapy and adverse incidents were taken both before and after the night confinement (NC) policy was implemented. Both patients and staff also expressed their views of the impact of the NC policy. Findings – Results provide converging evidence that the impact of the NC policy on patients is negligible. There were no consistent negative effects of confining patients overnight. Rather, patients and staff were broadly positive about the impact that the practice had on patients. Practical implications – Confining patients to locked bedrooms overnight does not exert any consistent influence, positive or negative, on patients’ sleep hygiene, behaviour or engagement with therapy, and patients expressed a broadly positive view of the practice of NC. Thus, a NC policy may have a contribution to make to the provision an effective high-secure mental health service. Originality/value – The study provides convincing evidence that secure inpatient mental health services that are considering the adoption of a NC policy may do so without fear of a negative impact on patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Harun Ur Rashid ◽  
Syed Zabid Hossain

Purpose This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of independent directors on the relationship between politicians on the board and corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD). Design/methodology/approach The ordinary least square has been used to analyze the CSRD data collected from the annual reports of all 30 listed banks of Bangladesh covering six years period ranging from 2013–2018. Further, the study has applied the generalized method of moments to prove the robustness of the model across the endogeneity issue. Findings The study found a positive relationship between board independence and CSRD that indicates board independence enhances the CSRD to a great extent. On the contrary, the inclusion of politicians on the board has shown a negative impact on CSRD that implies the higher the presence of political members on the board of a bank, the lower the involvement of the bank in CSR activities. However, board independence positively and significantly moderates the politician directors on the CSRD. The findings imply that if the independent directors are empowered, they play the role of whistleblowers that, in turn, mitigates the negative role of politician directors to CSRD. Research limitations/implications The study suggests the banks’ management, and regulatory bodies formulate sound policies so that the banks are forced to include more independent directors with enough power and at the same time, reduce the politician directors on the board. Originality/value The study extends debate on the political CSR and CSRD through validating the role of board independence.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Nugus ◽  
Joanne Travaglia ◽  
Maureen MacGinley ◽  
Deborah Colliver ◽  
Maud Mazaniello-Chezol ◽  
...  

PurposeResearchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants' views on structural options with discourses those views represent. As a case study, this paper aims to discern the extent to which and how conceptual underpinnings of stakeholder views on women's health contextualize different positions in the debate over the ideal structure of health services.Design/methodology/approachThe researchers chose a self-standing, comprehensive women's health service facing the prospect of being dispersed into “mainstream” health services. The researchers gathered perspectives of 53 professional and consumer stakeholders in ten focus groups and seven semi-structured interviews, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis.Findings“Women's marginalization” was the core theme of the debate over structure. The authors found clear patterns between views on the function of women's health services, women's health needs, ideal client group, ideal health service structure and particular feminist discourses. The desire to re-organize services into separate mainstream units reflected a liberal feminist discourse, conceiving marginalization as explicit demonstration of its effects, such as domestic abuse. The desire to maintain a comprehensive women's health service variously reflected post-structural feminism's emphasis on plurality of identities, and a radical feminist discourse, holding that womanhood itself constituted a category of marginalization – that is, merely being at risk of unmet health needs.Originality/valueAs a contribution to health organizational theory, the paper shows that the discernment of discursive underpinnings of particular stakeholder views can clarify options for the structure of health services.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1632-1653
Author(s):  
Nabila Nisha ◽  
Mehree Iqbal ◽  
Afrin Rifat ◽  
Sherina Idrish

The use of mobile technology-based services has made healthcare delivery more accessible and affordable in recent times. In fact, mobile health services today act as an effective means of providing healthcare knowledge to users directly from providers. However, the cynical behavior of users regarding this medium of healthcare services often encircles around the quality of such services. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of service quality and knowledge among other underlying factors that can influence future use intentions of m-Health services in the context of Bangladesh. The conceptual model of the study identifies that certain aspects of service qualities like reliability, privacy, responsiveness, empathy and information quality along with facilitating conditions, effort expectancy, performance expectancy and social influence plays an important role in capturing users' overall perceptions of mobile health services. Finally, the study highlights managerial implications, future research directions and limitations from the Bangladesh perspective.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheng-Wei Lin ◽  
Yuan-Hung Liu ◽  
Eugenia Y. Huang

PurposeThis study empirically verified employee engagement (EE) as an outcome of organizational communication and confirmed that the formation of EE is strengthened when smartphone use (SU) is at a higher level.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative approach was used in this research, whereby 408 valid samples were collected with an online survey. The hypotheses of direct effects were tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) procedure, and the moderating effects were tested using the unconstrained product indicator method and the PROCESS macro.FindingsThe results showed that EE was significantly influenced by person–organizationvalue fit (POVF), transformational leadership (TFL) and job autonomy (JA), and the effects of POVF and TFL were moderated significantly by SU. Although the influence of social support (SS) on EE was insignificant in the full model, SU moderated the effect of SS. The evidence also showed that work–family conflict (WFC) had no negative impact on EE.Research limitations/implicationsThe participants of this study were restricted to a local area.Practical implicationsOrganizations should develop job designs via two-way communication to bring up EE and SU can facilitate the process.Originality/valuePrevious research has identified EE as an outcome of organizational communication, but this concept has not yet been empirically verified. This research provides evidence to verify the above-mentioned concept and additionally confirms the moderating role of SU.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 955-975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorra Ellouze

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to investigate the role of customers and employees in the buffer effect of CSR around the 2008 financial crisis in the European context.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of 323 European firms listed in STOXX Europe 600 Index, different models are estimated to test whether the effect of CSR ratings on firms' relationships with their customers and employees could be different during the 2008 financial crisis relative to the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods.FindingsThe paper shows that CSR rating has a significantly negative impact on firms' accounts receivable and a significantly positive effect on employee productivity during the crisis period (from 2007 to 2009). However, there is no significant effect of CSR rating during the non-crisis periods. These results suggest that during negative events, customers are willing to continue supporting high-CSR firms by paying their invoices faster. Furthermore, these firms benefit from higher productivity of their employees who are willing to work harder in periods of uncertainty.Research limitations/implicationsFirms should invest in CSR practices to maintain strong and cooperative relationships with their customers and employees. Also, investors should choose firms engaging in more social capital. Moreover, policymakers should encourage implementing CSR practices which act as an insurance-like protection in times of negative events.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the previous studies by investigating whether the cooperative role of customers and employees can explain the buffer role of CSR around the crisis. Furthermore, it considers companies located in several European countries for a long period (from 2004 to 2012) to compare periods of crisis and non-crisis.


2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (12) ◽  
pp. 1703-1711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean D. Rundell ◽  
Adam P. Goode ◽  
Janna L. Friedly ◽  
Jeffrey G. Jarvik ◽  
Sean D. Sullivan ◽  
...  

The concept of value is receiving greater attention in rehabilitation and the broader health care environment. The overall purpose of this article is to present a framework to help clinicians, researchers, educators, and policy makers better understand the role of health services research in developing and evaluating evidence on value in rehabilitation. Value in health care is a multidimensional concept and may be defined differently by various stakeholders, but assessing value typically involves considering a combination of several health and economic outcomes. However, health care stakeholders often lack sufficient information on these outcomes to make well-informed decisions. Health services approaches such as comparative effectiveness research, patient-centered outcomes research, and health economics assessments are some ways to evaluate value. The evidence generated from such studies directly informs decision making and health policy. Rehabilitation professionals have a great opportunity to increase their engagement in describing, evaluating, delivering, and disseminating high-value care, but there are several barriers they need to consider to be most successful. Embracing health services research best practices is essential for advancing appropriate rehabilitation practice, research, and policy and for addressing challenges to implementing high-value care.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-251
Author(s):  
Ashutosh Muduli ◽  
Jeegnesh J. Trivedi

PurposeThe increased popularity of social media has been prompting the recruitment managers to use social media recruitment. Very little has been studied on the effectiveness of social media recruitment from the recruiter's perspective. Influenced by the diffusion of innovation theory, the study measures the usefulness of social media recruitment through various prehire and posthire recruitment outcomes. The study also used the media richness theory to examine the role of credibility and satisfaction as a mediating variable.Design/methodology/approachData has been collected from the recruiters in the public and private sector of India. Available literature is studied to develop survey instrument validated through experts from industry and academia. Pilot study was conducted to test for any construct weaknesses. Data is analyzed using AMOS.FindingsThe study result proved that social media recruitment is significantly related to both prehire outcomes and posthire outcomes. The result also proved the mediating effect of credibility and satisfaction and suggests recruitment practitioner to emphasize on disseminating credible, relevant and sufficient information through suitable communication mode.Practical implicationsHR professional to be careful about the information provided through a social media recruitment method. Practitioner to establish credibility of the information to create a sense of satisfaction by the applicants toward the information. Thus, as the information becomes more credible, the attraction to the organization also increases, which in turn results in more applicants applying for the job.Originality/valueThis is the first quantitative study to examine effectiveness of social media recruitment under the influence of mediator – credibility and satisfaction considering the data from the recruiters.


Subject Kenya power outlook. Significance The government's geothermal generation programme is driving a structural change in the power sector. Plans are for electricity generation to roughly double to 3,000 megawatts (MW) over the next few years, with hydroelectricity losing its dominant role. Kenya's medium-term economic growth prospects turn on the success of the government's rising spending on infrastructure investment in the energy and transport sectors. Impacts Focus on industry sources (diesal, gas, coal) obscures the dominant role of bio-energy (firewood, charcoal) in the energy mix. Increasing the role for natural gas in domestic power sectors will be pushed by regional governments with new offshore finds. Policymakers will continue to advocate the efficacy of mini grid or off-grid systems to augment the limited reach of 'national' grids.


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