Improving patient experience is a global priority for health policy-makers and care providers. The need to look at healthcare delivery through the eyes of patients is widely accepted, but how should it be done? What use can be made of this information, and what evidence is there that such exercises lead to better care? Understanding and Using Health Experiences: Improving patient care examines a broad range of different sources and techniques for gathering and analyzing health experiences. Providing an accessible and pragmatic overview of the diversity and richness of research in the field this book explores the strengths and limitations of different approaches, and assesses what each method can contribute to improving people's experience of illness, and the way that health services are delivered. The book looks at topics such as using focus groups to understand experiences of health and illness, patient surveys, and the internet as a source of information on people's experience. Using clear and engaging examples throughout, the book is accessibly written by experts in social science, health services, and health policy, and will be valuable to postgraduate students, healthcare practitioners, and individuals working in health and social policy, public sector management, and research.

Evaluation of health care is necessary if we are to understand the organisation of health services and to determine how health care interventions should be delivered. The second edition of this fully revised public health text introduces the various types of health care evaluations, and explores the ways in which scientifically robust studies can be used to assess health care interventions, with a focus on measuring their impact on patient outcomes. Throughout this book, the concepts and methods of evaluating health care interventions are considered in terms of four key dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency, humanity and equity. In order to fully equip the public health practitioner or student, this book: • Considers a broad range of evaluation methods including cross-sectional studies, quasi-experimental designs and qualitative methods • Gives an updated account of current theory, research and practice in the field • Features activities to help readers apply its content to their own practice Health Care Evaluation, 2nd edition is an essential textbook that outlines evaluation methods in an accessible way for public health students, public health practitioners and policy makers. Understanding Public Health is an innovative series published by Open University Press in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where it is used as a key learning resource for postgraduate programmes. It provides self-directed learning covering the major issues in public health affecting low, middle and high income countries. "In ageing societies and developing country populations at risk of long term conditions, the impact of new health care interventions on health and wellbeing require robust evaluation. Tsang, Cromwell and colleagues set out a comprehensive framework for a breadth of simple evaluations, carefully laid out with thoughtful vignettes for readers to address and informative reference material. A book for experienced and fledgling evaluators to access, maximising the chances of decisions around innovations being based on sound science." Professor Charles Wolfe, Professor of Public Health, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, UK "Evaluation is an essential tool to support health services respond to ever more complex demands from an ageing population. This volume is strongly recommended as it provides outstanding guidance combining authority with clarity and ease of use." Ray Fitzpatrick, Professor of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Oxford, UK

With new chapters on key topics such as mental health, the environment, race, ethnicity and health, and pharmaceuticals, this new edition maintains its multidisciplinary framework and bridges the gap between health policy and the sociology of health. It builds upon the success of the first by encompassing a range of issues, studies, and disciplines. The broad coverage of topics in addition to new chapters present an engagement with contemporary issues, resulting in a valuable teaching aid. This second edition brings together a diverse range of leading international scholars with contributors from Australia, Puerto-Rico, USA, Guatemala, Germany, Sri Lanka, Botswana, UK, South Sudan, Mexico, South Korea, Canada and more. The second edition of this Handbook remains a key resource for undergraduates, post-graduates, and researchers across multidisciplinary backgrounds including: medicine, health and social care, sociology, and anthropology. PART ONE: Culture, Society and Health PART TWO: Lived Experiences PART THREE: Health Care Systems, Access and Use PART FOUR: Health in Environmental and Planetary Context

What is it like to live with an illness? How do diagnostic procedures, treatments, and other encounters with medical institutions affect a patient's private and social life? By asking these types of questions, illness narratives have gained a reputation as a scientific domain in medicine in the last thirty years. Today, a patient's story plays an important role in doctor-patient communication and the development of a healing relationship. However, whereas patient experiences have been well acknowledged, methodologically reflected upon and widely collected as research data, less consideration has been invested in exploring how they work in practice. Used in the context of diagnosis, treatment, and teaching, patient stories give us a new perspective on how healthcare could be improved. Illness Narratives in Practice: Potentials and Challenges of Using Narratives in Health-related Contexts highlights the problems, challenges, and opportunities we face when using patient perspectives in practice and research in a clear format to provide readers with a comprehensive overview of this field. It investigates the epistemological foundations and communicational properties of illness narratives, as well as the pragmatic effects of using them as clinical and educational instruments. Significantly, it presents new examples from patient intakes and interviews that illustrate the disparity in communication between patients and medical professionals. The studies in this book also evaluate the experiences of medical practitioners and students who consciously use patient narratives as a tool for improved communication and diagnosis. Divided into eight sections with practical examples for medical teaching and practice, this book covers the use of patient narratives in communication training and decision making across medicine and psychotherapy. In addition, it reflects on the ethical aspects of working with a patient's personal experience of their illness, reports on cultural differences across the globe, and analyses how patients' stories are used in politics and the media. Written by scholars from multiple disciplines across clinical and theoretical fields, this rich resource provides a critical stance on the use of narratives in medical research, education, and practice.

Written by leaders in the field, this comprehensive step-by-step guide combines up-to-date clinical and research information that will help clinicians to advance their theoretical and clinical knowledge on mandibular implant overdentures. Furthermore, it describes treatment considerations for geriatric populations, covering all relevant aspects from physiology to treatment planning and patient management in the surgical and prosthetic phases. The phenomenon of aging is a global concern for policy makers, providers, and the public. Dentists worry especially about the burden their aging patients face to maintain their oral health-related quality of life and well-being. Furthermore, older patients require health care technologies that will enable them to maintain their oral health. Over the past few decades, mandibular implant-assisted complete prostheses have attracted the attention of both patients and clinicians, as research on the biological, functional, esthetic, and psychosocial benefits has increased. This book will be of value for all with an interest in the subject..

Healthcare information technologies are now routinely deployed in a variety of healthcare contexts. These contexts differ widely, but the smooth integration of IT systems is crucial, so the design, implementation, and evaluation of safe, effective, efficient and easy to adopt health informatics involves careful consideration of both human and organizational factors. This book presents the proceedings of the Context Sensitive Health Informatics (CSHI) conference, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 2013. The theme of this year’s conference is human and sociotechnical approaches. The Human Factors approach is distinctly design-driven and aims to optimize performance, safety and users’ sense of well-being associated with their use of a system through the application of user-centered systems design and evaluation. The papers and presentations included here are grouped under the topics: patients and IT; usability test and evaluation; work tasks and related contexts; human factors and simulation; and context and systems design, and outline theories and models for studying contextual issues and insights related to how health information technologies can be better designed to accommodate different healthcare contexts. Healthcare organizations, health policy makers and regulatory bodies globally are starting to acknowledge this essential role of human and organizational factors for safe and effective health information technology. This book will be of interest to all those involved in improving the quality of healthcare worldwide.

The domain of eHealth faces ongoing challenges to deliver 21st century healthcare. Digitalization, capacity building and user engagement with truly interdisciplinary and cross-domain collaboration are just a few of the areas which must be addressed. This book presents 190 full papers from the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE 2018) conference, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, in April 2018. The MIE conferences aim to enable close interaction and networking between an international audience of academics, health professionals, patients and industry partners. The title of this year’s conference is: Building Continents of Knowledge in Oceans of Data – The Future of Co-Created eHealth, and contributions cover a broad range of topics related to the digitalization of healthcare, citizen participation, data science, and changing health systems, addressed from the perspectives of citizens, patients and their families, healthcare professionals, service providers, developers and policy makers. The second part of the title in particular has attracted a large number of papers describing strategies to create, evaluate, adjust or deliver tools and services for improvements in healthcare organizations or to enable citizens to respond to the challenges of dealing with health systems. Papers are grouped under the headings: standards and interoperability, implementation and evaluation, knowledge management, decision support, modeling and analytics, health informatics education and learning systems, and patient-centered services. Attention is also given to development for sustainable use, educational strategies and workforce development, and the book will be of interest to both developers and practitioners of healthcare services.

Transnational Mobility and Global Health spotlights the powerful and dynamic intersections of human movement, inequality, and health. The book explores the interacting political, economic, social, cultural, and climatic drivers of health and migration, proposing innovative ways to enhance global health and care provision in an era of transnational mobility. As health security continues to rise up the agenda in international politics, the book also analyses the political determinants of health and migration. Within the framework of key drivers of unequal mobilities, this book treats interconnected health and migration themes not covered elsewhere under one cover: health tourism, conflict-induced and other vulnerable-population movements, humanitarian crises, human rights, the health-development linkage, migrant health-care, and health-competency education. The book also considers global health vulnerabilities in the wake of climate change, and the biomedical, ethical, and governance challenges of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. Finally, the book suggests ways of evaluating mobility-influenced health outcomes and equity impacts, and explores how the global circulation of health expertise could help to rectify care-provider shortages. The challenges to global health considered in this book are only likely to become more intense as the 21st-Century surge in transnational migration continues. Readers will gain interdisciplinary appreciation for the relevance of health for migration and of migration for global health. Researchers, students, practitioners, and policy makers interested in individual and population health, sustainable development, and migration studies will find this book a useful and inspiring guide to contemporary global challenges.

There are four core themes developed in this book which deal with critical issues, models, theories and frameworks. These expound understandings of patient centred care and the processes, practices and behaviours supporting its attainment: conceptions and cultures of patient-centred care, coordination, communication, innovation.

The Language of Patient Feedback provides a unique insight into a diverse range of issues related to healthcare. Through the comprehensive and detailed interrogation of 29 million words of online patient feedback on the NHS in England, as well as 11 million words of responses to the feedback from NHS providers, this book: Uses a combination of computer-assisted and human analysis (Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis) to examine the extent to which characteristics like age and gender result in different types of evaluation. Investigates why nurses, doctors, dentists and receptionists are associated with very distinct types of feedback. Demonstrates the ways that NHS staff respond to comments and what this reveals about underlying institutional ideologies and practices. Concludes with suggestions for key recommendations that the NHS could act upon to improve the overall level of care it provides, as well as reflecting on what patient evaluation can actually tell us. The Language of Patient Feedback is key reading for anyone undertaking research within corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and health communication.