PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a change management perspective contributes new understandings about music therapy implementation processes. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Narrative inquiry, ethnography, and arts-based research methods were used to explore the experiences of 12 music therapists who developed new services in healthcare settings. These experiences were inte...

Benchmarking of clinical laboratory activities has become a tool used increasingly to enable administrators and managers to obtain an independent evaluation of the performance of the laboratory and identify opportunities for improvement. Benchmarking is particularly important because of the diversity and complexity of the various sections of the laboratory. The critical component of laboratory ...

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of quality improvement collaboratives in improving the quality of care. Data sources Relevant studies through Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases. Study selection Two reviewers independently extracted data on topics, participants, setting, study design, and outcomes. Data synthesis Of 1104 articles identified, 72 were included in the...

BACKGROUND Ensuring Cultural Competence (CC) in health care is a mechanism to deliver culturally appropriate care and optimise recovery. In policies that promote cultural competence, the training of mental health practitioners is a key component of a culturally competent organisation. This study examines staff perceptions of CC and the integration of CC principles in a mental healthcare organis...

Healthcare organisations are using redesign to tackle variation in the quality of care and improve public satisfaction. It is represented as a radical challenge to traditional assumptions and practices which involves thinking through the best process to achieve speedy and effective patient care, identifying delays, unnecessary steps, or potential for error, and redesigning the process to improv...

BACKGROUND Healthcare accreditation standards are advocated as an important means of improving clinical practice and organisational performance. Standard development agencies have documented methodologies to promote open, transparent, inclusive development processes where standards are developed by members. They assert that their methodologies are effective and efficient at producing standards ...

OBJECTIVE Concerns about care quality have prompted calls to create workplace cultures conducive to high-quality, safe and compassionate care and to provide a supportive environment in which staff can operate effectively. How healthcare organisations assess their culture of care is an important first step in creating such cultures. This article reports on the development and validation of a too...

Purpose – This editorial briefly outlines present applications of lean systems applications in healthcare and then summarises the contributions to this special edition. Design/methodology/approach – A brief background to lean is introduced to provide the context for the subsequent papers in this special issue Findings – The requirements for successful introduction of Lean Systems Thinking (LST)...

There is a trend in health systems around the world to place great emphasis on and faith in improving ‘leadership’. Leadership has been defined in many ways and the elitist implications of traditional notions of leadership sit uncomfortably with modern healthcare organisations. The concept of distributed leadership incorporates inclusivity, collectiveness and collaboration, with the result that...

K. Grzybowska, Poznan University of Technology, Faculty of Engineering Management, Poznan, Poland B. Gajdzik, The Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Materials Science and Metallurgy, Katowice, Poland Organisational change management is not effi cient without gaining and sharing knowledge by the members of the enterprise. Both in the conditions of relative organisational stability and...