Search results

This paper aims to present a two-decade effort to improve team functioning and patient outcomes in inpatient stroke rehabilitation settings.

The principal improvement effort was conducted over a nine-year period in 50 Veterans Administration Hospitals in the USA. A comprehensive team-based model was developed and tested in a series of empirical studies. A leadership development intervention was used to improve team functioning, and a follow-up cluster-randomized trial documented patient outcome improvements associated with the leadership training.

Iterative team and leadership improvements are presented in summary form, and a set of practice-proven development observations are derived from the results. Details are also provided on the leadership training intervention that improved teamwork processes and resulted in improvements in patient outcomes that could be linked to the intervention itself.

The practice-proven development observations are connected to leadership development theory and applied in the form of suggestions to improve leadership development and teamwork in a broad array of medical treatment settings.

This paper includes suggestions for leadership improvement in medical treatment settings using interdisciplinary teams to meet the customized needs of the patient populations they serve.

The success of the team effectiveness model and the team-functioning domains provides a framework and best practice for other health care organizations seeking to improve teamwork effectiveness.

To assess how prepared public bodies are for the implementation of the UK Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in January 2005.

The FOI Act 2000 established a general right of access to information held by public authorities in the UK, subject to certain exemptions. This article reports on research undertaken in the summer of 2004 which sought to establish the state of preparedness in UK public bodies by the assessment of four case studies, comprising a local authority, a national museum, a police force, and a university. Structured interviews were conducted with key staff in each organisation using the Department for Constitutional Affairs’ model action plan for preparing for FOI as the basis. The key aspects of the analysis are leadership, training, records management, customers and systems and procedures.

The investigation has revealed that, overall, the majority of organisations implemented the most basic and immediate changes required to cope adequately in January 2005 when customers were expected to start to request information. Their level of preparedness is therefore limited to tackling the superficial areas of concern, as a result of the short‐term and reactionary approach adopted.

Highlights organisational, legislative and governmental weaknesses in preparing for the FOI Act. This investigation also concludes that the enactment of the proposed new archival and records management legislation is essential to ensure that public bodies are compelled to further improve the provision and management of records.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

MID‐SEPTEMBER, with the summer gone irrevocably, allows the librarian a fortnight of reflection time before the strenuous interests of autumn and winter become active. That is, if he returns stimulated in body and mind from a reasonable holiday and does not become immersed immediately in the almost compelling series of meetings of librarians arranged for the last fortnight of September and for October. For the student members the Birmingham Summer School remains in session until the 20th; for their elders ASLIB will confer at Swanwick from the 19th to 21st, and, in the same week‐end at Buxton, there will be the conference on library work for children; and, a week later, 26th to 29th, the University and Research Section will occupy Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. The arrangements for October are set out in the L. A. Record. Their profusion embarasses many librarians. It is only natural that, as librarianship extends, every organized part of it becomes keenly aware of its individuality and, as the profession today grows more and more conference‐minded, few can keep step, save in a general way, with more than a fraction of the meetings arranged. Some effort is made by the L.A. and by librarians to preserve and strengthen the basic unity of all librarianship, but otherwise the diversity is great.

This chapter explores how writing ‘with animals’ can contribute to the development of feminist and queer approaches in Critical Management Studies (CMS). The chapter is theoretically framed with previous work in organisational studies and CMS on gendered writing and introduces the queer practice of ‘dog-writing’ used by feminists in human-animal studies like Donna Haraway and Susan McHugh. Cixous’ essay on ‘On birds, women and writing’ is used to introduce the idea of writing as a ‘difficult joy’. The author then uses writing from her personal journals to ‘write with animals’, especially birds, to show how thought can start. Writing with animals means to be-in-the-world with animals and recognise the ways they are foundational to not only organisational life, but thought itself. By drawing on developments by queer and feminist writers in human-animal studies CMS writers can engage with contemporary creative resistance practices and offer affirmative alternatives.

LIBRARIES NEED NO APOLOGY. They do not need to be justified by platitudes about the heritage which books convey from one generation to the next. They prove their value by daily service in education, in research, and—most important of all in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland—in the spread of literacy. Of the three curses of Africa—ignorance, poverty and disease—one may argue that the greatest is ignorance, because the absence of knowledge prevents the elimination of the other two. The school can teach the elements of reading, can bestow on the pupil the basic tool of learning, but unless he has access to a suitable store of books on which to exercise this skill, it will steadily decay. The patient work of the teacher will have been wasted. This truth is gaining increasing recognition in Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Since the Second World War, urban and rural library services have grown up in all three territories of the Federation to supply reading material to the African population. In Nyasaland the British Council, in Northern Rhodesia the newly created Northern Rhodesia Library Service, in Southern Rhodesia the African Literature Bureau, have spread their activities far into the bush. Government, municipalities and mining companies have also attempted to satisfy the tremendous thirst for learning which exists among those Africans who work in the towns. No one would pretend that these library services are perfect. They have great difficulties of cost, distance and poor communications to overcome, difficulties which are scarcely conceivable by the librarian working in Europe. But there is a strong conviction of the need to bring the benefits of books to an ever larger proportion of the people.

Mental health champions (MHCs) and young health ambassadors (YHAs) are two innovative public health interventions. MHCs are practitioners who work in schools and other youth settings and aim to be the “go to” person for mental health in these settings. YHAs are a linked parallel network of young people, who champion mental health and advocate for youth involvement, which was co-produced with young people across all stages of development implementation. This paper aims to identify the potential benefits, barriers and facilitators of these interventions.

Semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 19) were undertaken with a purposive sample of n = 13 MHCs, and n = 6 YHAs, between June 2021 and March 2022. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, anonymised and then analysed following a thematic approach. Ethical approval was granted by Newcastle University’s Faculty of Medical Sciences Ethics Committee.

The findings are organised under five key themes: motivating factors and rewards for MHCs and YHAs; outcomes for children and young people (CYP) and others; impact on youth settings and culture; facilitators of successful implementation; and implementation challenges and opportunities.

These findings are intended to be of relevance to practice and policy, particularly to those exploring the design, commissioning or implementation of similar novel and low-cost interventions, which aim to improve mental health outcomes for CYP, within the context of youth settings.

The interventions reported on in the present paper are novel and innovative. Little research has previously been undertaken to explore similar approaches, and the individual experiences of those involved in the delivery of these types of interventions.