Kategoria BISAC: Medical >> Health Care Delivery

Qualitative researchers have traditionally been cautious about claiming that their work was scientific. The "right-on" schools have exaggerated this caution into an outright rejection of science as a model for their work. Science is, for them, outmoded; "an archaic form of consciousness surviving for a while yet in a degraded form" (Tyler 1986:200). Scientists' assertions that they are in pursuit of truth simply camouflage their own lust for power. There is no essential difference between truth and propaganda.

The authors acknowledge that the boundary between science and...

Schizophrenic Women is a fascinating report on the lives of seventeen families that suffered the experiences associated with the hospitalization of the wife and mother for mental illness. A description and analysis of representative experiences is presented here in an attempt to investigate various key issues--the patterns of family living preceding the crisis leading to medical hospitalization; how the patterns fell apart; how personal and family crises became psychiatric emergencies; how the hospital experiences modified both the immediate crises and the earlier patterns of...

In the United States today we are confronted by a number of serious social problems, not the least of which concern the character of our basic human services. In each of the broad public domains of welfare, education, law, and health there are crises of public confidence. Each in its own way is failing to accomplish its essential mission of alleviating material deprivation, instructing the young, controlling and righting criminal and civil wrongs, and healing the sick. The poor, the student, the offender and the victim, the sick-all have in some way protested the failure of the...

There is evidence that women who live in societies that uphold male privilege--the majority of the world's women--are at increased risk for HIV infection. In Local Women, Global Science, Karen M. Booth looks closely at the operation of two clinics for sexually transmitted diseases in Nairobi, Kenya, and explores how internationally funded and nationally sanctioned interventions to stop the spread of HIV have focused almost exclusively on the sexual and reproductive behaviors of those who are least able to challenge male power and dominance--working-class and poor women. Moving past the...

In the rush to development in Botswana, and Africa more generally, changes in work, diet, and medical care have resulted in escalating experiences of chronic illness, debilitating disease, and accident. Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana documents how transformations wrought by colonialism, independence, industrialization, and development have effected changes in bodily life and perceptions of health, illness, and debility. In this intimate and powerful book, Julie Livingston explores the lives of debilitated persons, their caregivers, the medical and social networks of caring,...

Upon its enactment in July 1988, the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act (MCCA) was hailed as the first major expansion of government health care since the creation of Medicare in 1965. Supported by President Reagan, majorities in both houses of Congress, and the nation's largest senior-citizen interest group, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the legislation effectively plugged many of the holes in the existing Medicare system by providing protection against some but not all catastrophic health care expenses. Additionally, the consensus behind the MCCA appeared to...

Historically neither the health care system nor the government knew or wanted to know about SIDS. Bergman, who has worked with parents and with a small number of professionals, was president of the National SIDS Foundation (1972-77), got SIDS research into federal programs, and provided help for bereaved parents--counselling rather than jail. . . . This book is must reading for health care providers and for government health policymakers. It should be in all libraries. Rarely does a book offer so much insight into human need and into political medicine. Highly recommended. "Choice"

This...

A collection of original papers on the nature of AIDS social research, this volume brings together anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and public health researchers to consider the methodological, empirical, and conceptual aspects of the problem. Unlike other studies, which focus on the medical and epidemiological aspects of AIDS, this study specifically focuses on the social aspects of the disease, the response of the community and medical profession, and the effects of the epidemic upon the gay subculture. Consideration is given to methodological shortcomings in the research on...

This extremely valuable collection of fourteen chapters is divided into two sections, with the first section covering research on physical abuse in dating relationships and the second section covering the issue of sexual abuse in dating relationships. With the increasing public awareness of and concern about acquaintance rape, this is an excellent and timely book. It should be in the library of any researcher who studies violence against women and it would also be an invaluable resource for any college faculty or administrator who seeks to provide a healthy educational environment for all...

The possibility of treating patients with organ replacement therapy has created a new frontier in medical care. Hospitals have to deal with such vital issues as selecting potential recipients of transplants, ensuring equity in allocating organs, pre- and peri-transplantation care of patients, and post-transplantation follow-up of organ recipients. The decisions pertaining to these issues often fall to social workers, who, with their bifocal concern for individuals and society, have significant contributions to make. Here, Dhooper reviews the contributions of the few social workers in this...