Mark S. Rosenbaum, Jillian Sweeney and Jillian Smallwood
This article aims to illustrate how service organizations (e.g. cancer resource centers) can create restorative servicescapes. The article addresses whether cancer patients…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to illustrate how service organizations (e.g. cancer resource centers) can create restorative servicescapes. The article addresses whether cancer patients respond favorably to a cancer center's restorative servicescape and explores the reasons they might patronize the center and interact socially with others.
Design/methodology/approach
This article synthesizes various streams of literature from services marketing, natural psychology, and cancer and medical research. The study defines and develops the framework's categories and advances propositions based on the framework.
Findings
The model proposes that cancer patients should respond favorably to a cancer center's restorative servicescape. By spending time in the center, people living with cancer may be able to remedy four frequently experienced, negative symptoms associated with fatigue.
Research limitations/implications
The study explores a not‐for‐profit cancer resource center that offers members an array of participatory activities within a homelike environment. However, it may be difficult for traditional medical facilities to fashion restorative servicescapes.
Practical implications
The study helps inform medical practitioners about the psychosocial benefits cancer resource centers offer cancer patients. This article provides a discussion regarding a cancer center's development of its Connect‐to‐Care program, based on an oncologist and a cancer center representative joining together to discuss a patient's cancer diagnosis and care.
Originality/value
This article proposes a theoretical understanding on how the physical and restorative qualities of an environment transform human health. It links the services domain to the health sciences and suggests a means by which cancer patients can “do more with less” by combining medical treatment with cancer resource center patronage.
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Mark Scott Rosenbaum and Jill Smallwood
– This article aims to empirically illustrate the socially supportive role of cancer resource centers in their members' lives.
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to empirically illustrate the socially supportive role of cancer resource centers in their members' lives.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and the QLQ-C30 to investigate the relationships between social support and respondents' quality of life. The authors also draw on internal cancer resource center data.
Findings
The results show that the type of classes respondents engage in at the center, frequency of class/activity attendance, and member-to-member social support do not influence respondents' perceived quality of life. However, employee-to-member support does enhance a respondent's quality of life.
Research limitations/implications
The study suggests that the activity programming at cancer resource centers is a conduit for the socially supportive relationships that form between and among employees and members. Given that the sample site was situated in a high-income, relatively stable suburban locale, the findings may not generalize to all locales.
Practical implications
The study helps inform medical practitioners about the social supportive benefits that cancer resource centers offer cancer patients. This article discusses a cancer center's Connect-to-Care program, which joins together an oncologist and a cancer center representative at a patient's initial cancer diagnosis.
Social implications
Oncologists and people living with, or affected by, cancer need to be aware of the healing potential of cancer resource centers.
Originality/value
This article links the third-place paradigm with public health. Cancer resource centers emerge as third places where people living with cancer may obtain support from center employees, which enhances their quality of life.
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Jillian C. Sweeney, Pennie Frow, Adrian Payne and Janet R. McColl-Kennedy
The purpose of this study is to examine how servicescapes impact well-being and satisfaction of both hospital customers (patients) and health care professional service providers.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how servicescapes impact well-being and satisfaction of both hospital customers (patients) and health care professional service providers.
Design/methodology/approach
The study investigates how a hospital servicescape impacts two critical outcomes – well-being and satisfaction – of both hospital patients (customers) and health care professionals, who are immersed in that environment.
Findings
The hospital servicescape had a greater impact on physical, psychological and existential well-being for professionals than for patients. However, the reverse was true for satisfaction. The new servicescape enhanced the satisfaction and physical and psychological well-being of professionals but only the satisfaction of customers.
Research limitations/implications
The study implications for health care policy suggest that investment in health care-built environments should balance the needs of health care professionals with those of customers to benefit their collective well-being and satisfaction.
Practical implications
Based on the findings, the authors propose that servicescape investments should focus on satisfying the physical needs of patients while also placing emphasis on the psychological needs of professionals.
Social implications
Health care spending on physical facilities should incorporate careful cost-benefit analysis, ensuring that beneficial features for both user groups are included in new hospital designs, omitting features that are less supportive of well-being.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to compare the impact of the same real-life servicescape on the satisfaction of both customers and service providers (professionals) and considers the critical health outcome of well-being.
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Hannah Meacham, Peter Holland, Patricia Pariona-Cabrera, Haiying Kang, Tse Leng Tham, Timothy Bartram and Jillian Cavanagh
Paramedics have played a critical role in the health care system response to the COVID-19 pandemic as frontline responders. However, in comparison to other health care workers…
Abstract
Purpose
Paramedics have played a critical role in the health care system response to the COVID-19 pandemic as frontline responders. However, in comparison to other health care workers (i.e. nurses), less research has been conducted on how paramedic work has been undertaken and how they manage their resources in the context of high workloads. This study examines several factors that deplete paramedic resources as well as the importance of family support in buffering the effects of low levels of resilience that can impact paramedic intention to leave and promotive voice.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 648 paramedics employed by Ambulance Victoria, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine five hypotheses: (1) resilience mediates the relationship between role overload and intention to leave; (2) resilience mediates the relationship between role overload and promotive voice; (3) family support moderates the relationship between role overload and resilience; (4) family support moderates the indirect effect of role overload on intention to leave via resilience and (5) family support moderates the indirect effect of role overload on promotive voice via resilience.
Findings
We found that when family support was low, the impact of role overload on turnover intention via resilience was significant. When family support was low, the negative impact of role overload on promotive voice via resilience was significant. When family support was high, such a negative indirect effect was not significant in predicting employee promotive voice via resilience.
Practical implications
We suggest that organisations should focus human resource management (HRM) policies and practices on family-friendly initiatives to further enhance family support resources to benefit individuals, families and organisations.
Originality/value
Our findings demonstrate the importance of family support as a buffer to the negative effects of role overload on employee resilience and promotive voice. There is clear importance of the contextual elements of family support as a resource, and its absence may result in resource depletion and can act as a catalyst in a resource depletion spiral. This demonstrates the importance of organisations understanding and learning to utilise external resources to complement organisational and individual resources to reduce intention to leave and support promotive employee voice. We suggest that organisations should focus HRM policies and practices on family-friendly initiatives to further enhance family support resources to benefit individuals, families and organisations.
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Mark S. Rosenbaum, Jillian C. Sweeney and Carolyn Massiah
The purpose of this paper is to help senior center managers and service researchers understand why some patrons experience health benefits, primarily fatigue relief, through…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to help senior center managers and service researchers understand why some patrons experience health benefits, primarily fatigue relief, through senior center day services participation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct two separate studies at a senior center. The first study represents a grounded theory that offers an original, basic social process regarding mental restoration in senior centers. The second study draws on Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and employs survey methodology.
Findings
Senior center patrons who perceive a center's restorative stimuli experience health benefits such as relief from four types of fatigue, enhanced quality of life, and improved physical and mental well-being.
Research limitations/implications
The paper shows that senior centers may be relatively inexpensive, non-medical services that can help patrons relieve fatigue symptoms, which are often treated with pharmaceutical medication and medical visits. A limitation is the small sample size, which restricts generalizability.
Practical implications
The results show that senior center managers may promote patron health by fostering service designs and programs that allow members to temporarily escape from everyday life and interact in an ever-changing environment that fosters a sense of belonging.
Social implications
Senior center day services help patrons relieve fatigue, and its symptoms, in an affordable, non-medical, and non-pharmaceutical manner.
Originality/value
The paper clarifies the role of senior centers in patrons’ lives by drawing on ART. Senior centers that can offer patrons restorative environments are likely to play a significant role in patrons’ physical, social, and mental well-being.
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Tessa Withorn, Carolyn Caffrey, Joanna Messer Kimmitt, Jillian Eslami, Anthony Andora, Maggie Clarke, Nicole Patch, Karla Salinas Guajardo and Syann Lunsford
This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.
Findings
The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.
Originality/value
The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.
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Timothy Bartram, Jillian Cavanagh, Beni Halvorsen, Patricia Pariona-Cabrera, Jessica Borg, Matthew Walker and Narges Kia
Aged-care work has become an extreme form of work. Anti-violence HRM, comprising practices to combat workplace violence, is important in an industry with widespread violence. In…
Abstract
Purpose
Aged-care work has become an extreme form of work. Anti-violence HRM, comprising practices to combat workplace violence, is important in an industry with widespread violence. In this paper, we employ social exchange theory to better understand the effect of anti-violence HRM and trust in the manager on perceived nurse and PCA cynicism working in Australian aged care facilities and their subsequent intention to leave.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a mixed method with two stages. Stage 1 comprised semi-structured interviews with 10 managers and 50 nurses and PCAs working in Australian aged care facilities. Stage 2 comprised a survey of nurses and PCAs with a total of 254 completed responses in Time 1 (first wave) and 225 completed responses in Time 2 (second wave).
Findings
We tested three hypotheses and reported that interestingly anti-violence HRM was positively associated with organisational cynicism. Organisational cynicism mediated the relationship between anti-violence HRM and intention to leave. Worker trust in the manager moderated the relationship between anti-violence HRM practices and organisational cynicism, such that high levels of trust in the manager increased the effect of anti-violence HRM practices to reduce organisational cynicism and subsequently reduce intention to leave.
Originality/value
We find evidence that in aged care, workers' trust in their managers is critical for effectual anti-violence HRM. We argue that implementation of HRM practices may be more complex in extreme work settings. It is crucial to study HRM in situ and understand the root of social exchange(s) as a foundation for HRM to influence employee attitudes and behaviour.