Maria Mathews, Dana Ryan, Lindsay Hedden, Julia Lukewich, Emily Gard Marshall, Judith Belle Brown, Paul S. Gill, Madeleine McKay, Eric Wong, Stephen J. Wetmore, Richard Buote, Leslie Meredith, Lauren Moritz, Sarah Spencer, Maria Alexiadis, Thomas R. Freeman, Aimee Letto, Bridget L. Ryan, Shannon L. Sibbald and Amanda Lee Terry
Strong leadership in primary care is necessary to coordinate an effective pandemic response; however, descriptions of leadership roles for family physicians are absent from…
Abstract
Purpose
Strong leadership in primary care is necessary to coordinate an effective pandemic response; however, descriptions of leadership roles for family physicians are absent from previous pandemic plans. This study aims to describe the leadership roles and functions family physicians played during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and identify supports and barriers to formalizing these roles in future pandemic plans.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with family physicians across four regions in Canada as part of a multiple case study. During the interviews, participants were asked about their roles during each pandemic stage and the facilitators and barriers they experienced. Interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis approach was used to identify recurring themes.
Findings
Sixty-eight family physicians completed interviews. Three key functions of family physician leadership during the pandemic were identified: conveying knowledge, developing and adapting protocols for primary care practices and advocacy. Each function involved curating and synthesizing information, tailoring communications based on individual needs and building upon established relationships.
Practical implications
Findings demonstrate the need for future pandemic plans to incorporate formal family physician leadership appointments, as well as supports such as training, communication aides and compensation to allow family physicians to enact these key roles.
Originality/value
The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine the leadership roles of family physicians, which have been largely overlooked in past pandemic plans. This study’s findings highlight the importance of these roles toward delivering an effective and coordinated pandemic response with uninterrupted and safe access to primary care.
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Keywords
Irina Burlacu, Cathal O’Donoghue and Denisa Maria Sologon
Maria Andri and Olivia Kyriakidou
The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of evolution of medical autonomy as an analytic and historical aspect of the medical work organization in a public bureaucracy…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of evolution of medical autonomy as an analytic and historical aspect of the medical work organization in a public bureaucracy.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw on the analytic concept of organizational contradictions (Heydebrand, 1977) to inform a dialectical approach in organizational analysis. Semi-structured interviews with 20 doctors of a Greek general public hospital were conducted and archival data were collected.
Findings
The findings suggest that the historical development of two contradictions characterize the process of medical autonomy evolution. The first contradiction tends to develop between medical autonomy, as a self-control relation, and the established division of labour through which bureaucratic control is exercised over the allocation of resources and over the distribution of healthcare service. The second contradiction tends to develop between those reified aspects of the medical work organization and the ongoing organizing activity, i.e. activity towards extending, intensifying and centralizing organizational control over labour, resources and the distribution of healthcare services. These contradictions indicate a pressure towards constraining health professionals’ power to self-define their relationship with patients and towards curtailing their discretionary domain over the use of resources.
Originality/value
This paper offers an empirical approach to materialist dialectics for organizational analysis towards conceptualizing change as a historical process.
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Guoyang Wan, Yaocong Hu, Bingyou Liu, Shoujun Bai, Kaisheng Xing and Xiuwen Tao
Presently, 6 Degree of Freedom (6DOF) visual pose measurement methods enjoy popularity in the industrial sector. However, challenges persist in accurately measuring the visual…
Abstract
Purpose
Presently, 6 Degree of Freedom (6DOF) visual pose measurement methods enjoy popularity in the industrial sector. However, challenges persist in accurately measuring the visual pose of blank and rough metal casts. Therefore, this paper introduces a 6DOF pose measurement method utilizing stereo vision, and aims to the 6DOF pose measurement of blank and rough metal casts.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper studies the 6DOF pose measurement of metal casts from three aspects: sample enhancement of industrial objects, optimization of detector and attention mechanism. Virtual reality technology is used for sample enhancement of metal casts, which solves the problem of large-scale sample sampling in industrial application. The method also includes a novel deep learning detector that uses multiple key points on the object surface as regression objects to detect industrial objects with rotation characteristics. By introducing a mixed paths attention module, the detection accuracy of the detector and the convergence speed of the training are improved.
Findings
The experimental results show that the proposed method has a better detection effect for metal casts with smaller size scaling and rotation characteristics.
Originality/value
A method for 6DOF pose measurement of industrial objects is proposed, which realizes the pose measurement and grasping of metal blanks and rough machined casts by industrial robots.