This paper uses the phenomenon of very high satisfaction with remote rural health services in Scotland as a trigger for exploring what consumers want and like in health service utilisation - and why. It draws on the business literature in customer services marketing and economic sociology to illuminate why long-term associations between consumers and providers in health care are important and b...

BACKGROUND although there is a wealth of information available about quality improvement tools and techniques in healthcare there is little understanding about overcoming the challenges of day-to-day implementation in complex organisations like hospitals. The 'Quality and Safety in Europe by Research' (QUASER) study will investigate how hospitals implement, spread and sustain quality improvemen...

The programme of analytical sociology brings sharp focus to fundamental issues insociology as a scientific discipline. Its practitioners offer a clear paradigm of how sociologicalexplanations ought to proceed, from individual actors to social outcomes. This essay considerslimitations of the approach as a general framework for all sociological research, however. Theessay surveys ...

In the last three decades, medical doctors have increasingly been exposed to management control measures. This phenomenon has been reflected in a number of studies in various disciplines, including sociology, organisation studies, management, and health service research. This article seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the studies dealing with the impact of management on professional c...

The article examines the complex relationships among the sociological concept of socio-spatial segregation, urban poverty and health promotion, suggesting research topics that could contribute to a detailed analysis of the Brazilian social reality within the public health context, underpinning decisions on healthcare. Initially, the main aspects of the social division problems in major cities a...

This article has as its starting point two central ideas: textbooks as a means of production and dissemination of knowledge and narrative as an approach. After a brief review of studies on health/medical sociology textbooks, I analyze a few of these textbooks from the 1900-2012 period, produced in the United States and England. I have selected eleven textbooks which I thought were representativ...

it is important to consider the health concerns of adolescents before developing and implementing public health promotion or health education curriculum programs aimed at ameliorating priority health problems experienced by adolescents. the aim of this study was to test the psychometric properties of the original adolescent health concern inventory (ahci) for use with an iranian population.this...

R esearch in social epidemiology and medical sociology has consistently shown that people in lower socioeconomic status groups experience poorer health and live shorter lives than those in higher status groups. However, investigations of such differentials among people aged 65 and over is still comparatively rare. In this issue of the journal Huisman et al report on the results of their analyse...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE The presented analysis is a reconstruction of the origins, inspirations for development, and theoretical foundations of the critical and unmasking trend in Polish and Western medical sociology. ABBREVIATED DESCRIPTION OF THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE As a part of the critical medical sociology initiated in Poland by Professor Magdalena Sokołowska, a diagnosis of the (dys)f...