Industry professionals, government officials, and the general public often agree that the modern healthcare system is in need of an overhaul. With organizations concerned with the long-term care of patients, new strategies, practices, and organizational tools must be developed to optimize the current healthcare system. Recent literature suggests that patient participation may be the ideal solution, as patients and caregivers who are more actively involved in their healthcare experience better outcomes. Promoting Patient Engagement and Participation for Effective Healthcare Reform outlines models that can be used to harness the power of patient involvement as a way to instill change in the healthcare industry. This book features a convergence of healthcare professionals and scholars providing insights into the best practices of interventions and reform as well as practical applications to foster patient engagement and participation. It is a useful reference source for healthcare providers, students and professionals in the fields of nursing, therapy, and public health, as well as managers and policy makers.

In the last decades, the importance of performance management in healthcare organizations has progressively increased. Patient organizations can play a strategic role by providing peer support and education, filling service provision gaps within public healthcare. As experts of their own pathologies, organized patients can aid research and development projects and provide the policymakers with input from the patients’ perspectives. Despite these advantages, patient organizations still face criticalities including low political attention at a national and peripheral level, scarce management skills, planning, control, fundraising, and professionalism. Managing Patients' Organizations to Improve Healthcare: Emerging Research and Opportunities delivers emerging research that raises awareness about the contribution of patient organizations in the healthcare process within regulatory authorities, public, and healthcare managers and improves patients’ managerial and healthcare professional skills for more efficient and effective processes of care. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as organizational management, patient value, and quality healthcare, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, healthcare administrators, medical practitioners, researchers, academicians, students, and industry professionals seeking current research on public policy management and healthcare management.

The effective delivery of healthcare services is vital to the general welfare and well-being of a country’s citizens. Financial infrastructure and policy reform can play a significant role in optimizing existing healthcare programs. Health Economics and Healthcare Reform: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is a comprehensive source of academic material on the importance of economic structures and policy reform initiatives in modern healthcare systems. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as clinical costing, patient engagement, and e-health, this book is ideally designed for medical practitioners, researchers, professionals, and students interested in the optimization of healthcare delivery.

Recent literature suggests that patient participation and engagement may be the ideal solution to the efficacy of healthcare treatments, from a clinical and pragmatic view. Despite the growing discussions on the necessity of patient engagement, there is no set of universally endorsed, concrete guidelines or practices. Transformative Healthcare Practice through Patient Engagement outlines the best practices and global strategies to improve patient engagement. This book features a convergence of healthcare professionals and scholars elucidating the theoretical insights borne from successful patient education, and the technological tools available to sustain their engagement. This book is a useful reference source for healthcare providers, students and professionals in the fields of nursing, therapy, and public health, managers, and policy makers.

The development of better processes to provide proper healthcare has enhanced contemporary society. By implementing effective collaborative strategies, this development ensures proper quality and instruction for both the patient and medical practitioners. Advanced Systems for Improved Public Healthcare and Disease Prevention: Emerging Research and Opportunities provides emerging research on care delivery issues in global public healthcare and explores information and communication technology-based solutions for public healthcare improvement and disease prevention. While highlighting topics such as drug supply, infectious diseases, and pharmaceutical care, this publication explores the methods of global public healthcare provision, issues in healthcare access, and applications in overcoming the access issues. This book is an important resource for professionals, practitioners, researchers, academics, and graduate students interested in seeking current research on the various approaches towards improving public healthcare.

This book discusses how digital technology and demographic changes are transforming the patient experience, services, provision, and planning of health and social care. It presents innovative ergonomics research and human factors approaches to improving safety, working conditions and quality of life for both patients and healthcare workers. Personalized medicine, mobile and wearable technologies, and the greater availability of health data are discussed, together with challenges and evidence-based practice. Based on the Healthcare Ergonomics and Patient Safety conference, HEPS2019, held on July 3-5, 2019, in Lisbon, Portugal, this book offers a timely resource for graduate students and researchers, as well as for healthcare professionals managing service provision, planners and designers for healthcare buildings and environments, and international healthcare organizations.

At present citizens are more aware of their health and care rights and more literate about their disease. Furthermore the continuous development of technological and bio-medical solutions are alimenting the expectation for longer and better life expectancy, even despite the diagnosis. Patients require to be higher involved in the decision making about their care and are willing to deeply entangle all the possible treatment options, their advantages, and their risks. In other terms, citizens today want to be treated not only as “client” but mainly as partners of the medical action and as co-authors of the success of their healthcare pathway. Due to this socio-psychological change in patients’ attitude, healthcare systems today are claimed to a deep revision of their practices and organizational models in order to become better responsive to patients’ expectation and more sustainable and effective in the management of their services. Patient participation and engagement in healthcare management, indeed, is today acknowledged by policy makers and healthcare experts as a valuable option to orient changes and actions of the healthcare systems. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the positive outcomes of a participatory care approach at the clinical, psychosocial, and economic levels. Patient Engagement, thus, appears today not only an ethical but also a pragmatic imperative for the innovation and the improvement of healthcare system. Moving from these premises, this e-book collect first research experiences, conceptual contribution and review of good practices in the area of Patient Engagement promotion. The e-book also discuss the relevance and the theoretical linkages between the concept of Patient Engagement and that one of Patient Centered Medicine.

The development of better processes to relay medical information has enhanced the healthcare field. By implementing effective collaborative strategies, this ensures proper quality and instruction for both the patient and medical practitioners. Health Literacy: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice examines the latest advances in providing and helping patients and medical professionals to understand basic health information and the services that are most appropriate. Including innovative studies on interactive health information, health communication, and health education, this multi-volume book is an ideal source for professionals, researchers, academics, practitioners, and students interested in the improvement of health literacy.

The labor market is evolving very rapidly in recent years, in Europe and worldwide. The fast and deep changes brought a brand-new context of challenges and occupational risks to the attention of stakeholders. The current global financial crisis has increased the economic pressures on companies and they in turn have intensified the effects on employees, particularly in terms of new competition contexts and a lot of stress and mental health issues. Concurrently, social, political, and environmental problems generate under-employment, over-qualification, over-education, low wages for skilled workers, and unmet demand for education. Consequently, both high skilled and low skilled immigrant workers are increasing. In addition, workplaces are continually changing in step with the introduction of new technologies, materials, and work processes, together with the changes in the labor market, the new forms of employment, and the new work organizations. These changes lead to new opportunities for employees and employers – but also to new risks or re-actualization of old organizational risks. According to the EU-OSHA, the key points that describe the evolution that is currently ongoing in the world of work are globalization, the technical innovation, and the aging population. On one hand, some older potential risks are reappearing in organizations: intensive fear and worries, organizational anxiety, boredom, physical violence, alienation, segregation, loneliness, and isolation. On the other hand, re-emerging perceived organizational features seem vital for organizations and more important today than ever. Central constructs in the study of organizational behavior and organizational health such as perceived organizational support, commitment in organizational context, socialization processes, change capacity of organizations, perceived organizational justice, ergonomics, and motivation, nowadays seem increasingly important and renewed.

Neuroscientists found that chronic stress and cortisol can trigger long-term changes in brain structure and connectivity in individuals and emphasize the importance of reducing stressful factors in one’s daily life. Early exposure to stressful events can make a person more vulnerable to anxiety and other mood disorders later in their lifetime. Those who take active steps to reduce their stress through various means such as physical activity or therapy can reduce the negative long-term effects on the brain. Chronic Stress and Its Effect on Brain Structure and Connectivity is an essential reference source that presents current information on chronic stress management, the impact of mass media coverage on the human mind, and the effects of post-traumatic stress. Featuring research on topics such as the neurophysiological basis of moods, trauma, quantum cognition, mental health, therapy, and neurobiology, this book is ideally designed for mental health professionals, neuroscientists, neurologists, psychiatrists, researchers, and therapists.