Search results

Patient experience (PE) evaluation can identify critical issues in healthcare quality. Various methods are used for PE evaluation in the healthcare system in Ontario; however, evidence suggests that PE evaluation is not systematically performed and has not received substantial buy-in from healthcare providers. This study explores the perspectives of healthcare providers, managers and policymakers in Ontario on PE evaluation methods, barriers, utility and reliability.

The study used a qualitative descriptive design. Twenty-one semistructured interviews were conducted with healthcare providers, managers and policymakers in Ontario between April 2018 and May 2019. The authors used thematic analysis to analyze the data. The Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research quality criteria were used.

Barriers to PE evaluation include evaluation cost and the time and effort required to collect and analyze the data. Several factors affect the reliability of the evaluation, resulting in an unrealistically high level of patient satisfaction. These include the inclusivity of evaluation, the subjective nature of patient feedback, patients' concerns about health service continuity and the anonymity of evaluation. Participants were skeptical about the meaningfulness of evaluation because it may only yield general information that cannot be acted upon by healthcare providers, managers and policymakers for quality improvement.

This paper reveals that many healthcare providers, managers and policymakers do not see a tangible value in PE evaluation, regardless of Ontario's patient-centeredness and “patient first” rhetoric. An improvement in evaluation methods and a cultural change in the healthcare system regarding the value of PE are required to foster a better appreciation of the benefits of PE evaluation.

Social media has made a revolutionary change in the relationship between the customers and business or service providers by enabling customers to publish and share feedback and views about product or service quality. This revolutionary change has not been echoed in some healthcare systems. This study analyses the social media policies of healthcare regulatory authorities in Ontario and explores how these policies encourage or discourage healthcare professionals' use of social media for collecting patient stories and understanding patient experience.

The study used qualitative content analysis to analyse the policy documents, focusing on the manifest themes in these documents. It used convenient sampling to select 12 organizations, including regulating and licensing bodies and health service delivery organizations in Ontario. The authors collected 24 documents from these organizations, including policies, practice standards and social media learning materials.

In Ontario's healthcare system, social media is perceived as a source of risks to the healthcare professions and professionals. Healthcare regulators emphasize that the codes of conduct and professional standards extend to social media. The study found no systematic recognition of patient stories on social media as a source of information on healthcare quality that can be useful for healthcare professionals.

The study identifies potential unintended consequences of social media policies in the healthcare system and calls for policy and cultural changes to enable the development of safe social media platforms that can facilitate interaction between healthcare providers and patients, when necessary, without the fear of legal consequences or privacy breaches.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer knowledge of seafood sustainability and how that knowledge influences the purchase of seafood products.

Using an online survey (n=1,319), the authors investigated Australian consumer knowledge of seafood sustainability and the drivers of purchase choice. Objective knowledge categories were developed through the qualitative analysis of unprompted, open-ended responses and compared with other surveyed measures of objective knowledge. The relationship between these knowledge categories and the importance of sustainability in the purchase decision was tested.

A significant group of consumers either had no knowledge of seafood sustainability (17.8 per cent) or gave an incorrect response (15.5 per cent), while 25.1 per cent demonstrated simple and 41.6 per cent complex knowledge. Further, the knowledge was positively related to importance of sustainability when making purchase decisions. Sustainability moved from the lowest ranked attribute for the no knowledge group to the highest ranked attribute for the complex knowledge group.

The results show that the consumer knowledge about sustainable seafood cannot be assumed and that the level of sustainability knowledge influences the importance of sustainability in the purchase decision.

The results suggest that information-based strategies based on a universally shared definition of sustainability in the seafood industry designed to drive sustainable consumer behaviour for seafood must take the account of consumer knowledge.

This paper identifies and provides a classification framework for levels of consumer knowledge about sustainable seafood and demonstrates a positive relationship between knowledge and the importance of sustainability in consumer decisions with regard to purchasing seafood.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the barriers facing women aiming to progress in their careers, or return to work following a career break, and evaluate the effects of an innovatory e‐mentoring scheme designed to overcome such obstacles and promote career development.

An online community of practice was formed for professional women in four UK regions. A survey of the career barriers they experienced was carried out and 122 participants were matched using psychological profiling and computer processing. The e‐mentoring process and participants' development was evaluated by means of pre‐, mid‐, and post‐mentoring evaluation questionnaires.

Mentees showed improvements in many key employability skills. For example, their ability to identify their weaknesses and ways to develop professionally improved substantially, as did their networking skills and ability to identify their strengths. Mentors also indicated that they had experienced development, for example, greater self‐awareness, increased confidence, improved reflective skills, and development of online skills. A large proportion of participants viewed mentoring as a fundamental aid to women's development. The majority felt that electronic communication was effective in facilitating this mentoring.

The e‐mentoring programme which has been developed may be transferred to a range of other target groups. Matching mentees and mentors is one of the key challenges in e‐mentoring design: an innovative system was designed which was able to provide personalised matching for each mentee.

E‐mentoring is still relatively under‐researched, particularly from a European perspective. This paper provides evidence for the benefits of e‐mentoring in the promotion of gender equality.

Purpose – This paper aims to advance the argument for the transformative potential of e‐mentoring for professional women. Design/methodology/approach – Existing mentoring and e‐mentoring models are evaluated as the context for the development of an innovative e‐mentoring programme for professional women in the UK (Empathy‐Edge). The European Union‐funded programme consisted of 122 participants who were matched by a combination of psychological profiling and analytical processing of these data to produce optimal matches. The e‐mentoring system employed a comprehensive range of resources and communication media which are often not included in similar systems. Findings – Initial evaluation data are presented. The benefits and challenges of e‐mentoring are analysed, together with initial recommendations for implementing effective schemes. Practical implications – The paper argues that e‐mentoring is a valuable tool for the career and management development of both returners and employed women who wish to break through the “glass ceiling”. It also indirectly improves their information and communications technologies (ICT) skills. Additionally, the paper demonstrates the strategic importance of psychological profiling for matching mentoring participants. Originality/value – The field of e‐mentoring is relatively new and is under‐researched, particularly from a European perspective. Combining insights from the fields of mentoring, gender in management, and computer‐mediated communication, Empathy‐Edge offers a new approach to career development for professional women.

This special issue seeks to examine mentoring relationships and offer new perspectives and frameworks, suggesting exciting avenues for future research on mentoring and career development.

In the last two decades, the workplace has been dramatically transformed. Individuals traditionally had careers entrenched in organizations, relying on the paternalistic firm for career development. Increasingly now, individuals are enacting careers outside organizational boundaries, defining career success on their own terms rather than by the organizational measures of salary and rank. Rapid technological change and globalization have intensified the decoupling of individual careers from organizations, putting more emphasis on individuals for their own career development and creating an even greater need for mentoring.

Although much research has been done on the impact of mentoring on subjective and objective career success, there are still many unexamined and under‐explored aspects of mentoring. This collection of ten articles tackles some of these areas, providing new insights and offering new avenues for research and practice.

These articles are authored by individuals from a variety of disciplines (e.g. organizational behavior, psychology, health care), and countries (e.g. USA, UK, Nigeria), with each article bringing a unique lens to the study of mentoring and careers. Individually, each article makes a contribution to the better understanding of how mentoring has evolved and is enacted today. Together, this collection of articles provides important insights that it is hoped encourage even further research into the complexities of developmental relationships and their impact on career development.

Examines a number of issues in education and training by bringing together 19 abstracts from 1996 journals. Looks at quality learning, communication, information technology, distance learning, lifelong learning and the student market.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the highly cited articles published in Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ), since its inception, to answer three research questions: first, how have scholarly articles published in AAAJ developed? second, what are the focus areas and characteristics of articles in AAAJ, and who are the influential authors? third, who are the emerging next generation scholars and what are the emerging research themes in AAAJ?

A structured literature review (SLR) was used to analyse 126 most cited classic AAAJ articles and 21 additional emerging articles published between 1988 and 2016. Traditional literature reviews can have varied results because of a lack of rigour. The SLR method allows for an examination in detail of the articles, authors, focus areas and pattern of AAAJ publishing over three decades.

The findings show increased diversity in more recent years in theories, methods, origins, focus areas, and where AAAJ articles are cited, which highlights that the interdisciplinary accounting research project is maturing and remaining true to the ideal of being inclusive.

Within this diversity, the analyses show that AAAJ remains focussed on and presents opportunities for impactful accounting research related to social issues, including non-financial corporate reporting/disclosure, public sector accounting, corporate governance and alternative forms of accounting, audit and accountability. Additionally, there is a need for more practice-based research to address the “wicked” problems at the intersection between accounting and society.

This paper presents accounting researchers with an opportunity to develop insightful and publishable studies. Also, it serves as a basis for developing future research agendas in the interdisciplinary accounting field.

Teacher retention and continued teacher growth and development have long been critical global issues in education. The recent pandemic crisis and subsequent “great resignation” (Lodewick, 2022) have returned our attention to the need for positive and enriching educational landscapes that promote teacher collaborative reflection, knowledge, and growth in order to sustain teachers in the field. This chapter explores the ongoing teacher learning that has occurred within two knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) in the United States. It begins with an overview of Craig's early work with teachers, during which her conceptualization of knowledge communities emerged. According to Craig, knowledge communities are safe, collaborative spaces that cohere around teachers' intra/inter-school dialogue and their storying/restorying (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996, 1998) of experiences. Additionally, knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) begin with originating events, allow teachers' experiences (Dewey, 1938) to resonate with others in the group, feature reciprocity of members' mindful responses, and promote the development of shared ways of knowing. Equally important, knowledge communities evolve and change, fuel ongoing reflection in community, and bring moral horizons into view. Employing these knowledge community qualities as our lens, we examine the interactions of the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy. The Portfolio Group is a teacher/teacher educator/researcher group formed in 1998 during a US education reform era (Craig, Curtis et al., 2020). Its sister group, the Faculty Academy, is a cross-institutional, cross-discipline higher education group of teacher educators/researchers formed in 2002 (Craig, Turchi et al., 2020). Employing a parallel stories representation (Craig, 1999), exemplars (Mishler, 1990) from both groups show how teacher collaborative groups have the capacity to be safe spaces in which critical professional dialogue, reflective exchanges, and generous scholarship occur among members. Furthermore, they are nurturing spaces in which teachers can thrive and be their best-loved selves (Craig, 2013; Schwab, 1954/1978). These two groups exemplify the ways in which knowledge communities support teacher collaboration, promote ongoing teacher growth and development, and foster teacher sustainability.