The purpose of our work is to improve the understanding of cooperative work in organizations. Three main services of a cooperative work system are identified: Collaboration: management of shared objects, Coordination: ordering of tasks within the process, and Communication: exchange of information between users. We aim at first to bring out the implicit cooperation support in complex object ver...

This article provides an overview of health care performance measurement, including a chronological history of the major developments in the performance measurement field. It is not intended to be all-encompassing in its descriptions of events and organizations but, rather, its purpose is to provide a broad historical context for describing health care performance measurement activities of the ...

BACKGROUND Infection prevention and control education for hospital-based health care personnel has differed across organizations because of a lack of identified practice competencies. This gap also has resulted in variation of the educational curriculum in the academic setting and a lack of consistent preparation for emergency responses. The purpose of this study was to develop a list of compet...

The authors describe a seven-step consensus development process used to create the two most recent editions of the Academic Pediatric Association's (APA's) educational guidelines for pediatric residency. The 1996 (printed) and 2004 (online) editions of the guidelines were designed as flexible tools to help residency programs meet changing accreditation requirements by providing lists of goals a...

Organizations have established many R&D performance indicators for their unique needs. Large research organizations in the developed countries use publication counts, citations, patent counts, and patent citations as key R&D performance indicators. In developing countries research organizations have different research objectives. The appropriate R&D performance indicators should serve several f...

One set of important objectives of patient associations is to provide education, support, and advice to those affected by cardiac arrhythmias to ensure that they have access to appropriate diagnosis and treatment. In this perspective it is essential to establish a balanced partnership between patients and clinicians in order to facilitate the work of the patient association. Such associations m...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings are common in patients and athletes with shoulder pain. Historically these anatomic derangements have been thought to be the source of the patient's symptoms, and approaches have been focused on restoring the anatomy. This manuscript will address three objectives: (1) suggest that the approach to rotator cuff disease should be based on the patient's his...

BACKGROUND Health services and population health innovations advance when knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) occurs among researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and consumers using high-quality evidence. However, few KTE models have been evaluated in practice. Communities of practice (CoP) - voluntary, self-organizing, and focused groups of individuals and organizations - may provide one ...

The development of an organizational strategy provides a long-term road map for a health care organization, and is vitally important in the light of current uncertain economic circumstances. The strategy statements provide the bedrock for the entire organization to create and execute tactics for viable future business, prioritize goals, and allocate and coordinate resources. Yet, strategic plan...

Discussion Papers are a series of manuscripts in their draft form. They are not intended for circulation or distribution except as indicated by the author. For that reason Discussion Papers may not be reproduced or distributed without the written consent of the author. Abstract: This paper starts with an initial gesture accepting the validity of many of the criticisms of modernity by some leadi...