Books in the The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series

We are on the verge of the nation's worst nursing shortage in history. Dedicated nurses are leaving hospitals in droves, and there are not enough new recruits to the profession to meet demand. Even hospitals that were once very highly regarded for the...

Helping Soldiers Heal tells the story of the US Army's transformation from a disparate collection of poorly standardized, largely disconnected clinics into one of the nation's leading mental health care systems. It is a step-by-step guidebook for military and civilian health care systems alike. Jayakanth Srinivasan and Christopher Ivany provide a unique insider-outsider perspective as key participants in the process, sharing how they confronted the challenges firsthand and helped craft and guide the unfolding change.The Army's system was being overwhelmed with mental health problems among soldiers and their family members, impeding combat readiness. The key to the transformation was to apply the tenets of "e;learning"e; health care systems. Building a learning health care system is hard; building a learning mental health care system is even harder. As Helping Soldiers Heal recounts, the Army overcame the barriers to success, and its experience is full of lessons for any health care system seeking to transform.

"Nursing, everyone believes, is the caring profession. Texts on caring line the walls of nursing schools and student shelves. Indeed, the discipline of nursing is often known as the 'caring science.' Because of their caring reputation, nurses top the...

Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU.

The first book to examine the arguments for and against mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, utilizing survey data, interviews, and other original research to focus on two case studies (California and the Australian state of Victoria).

In its early years, Israel's dominant ideology led to public provision of health care for all Jewish citizens-regardless of their age, income, or ability to pay. However, the system has shifted in recent decades, becoming increasingly privatized and...

Stacey draws on observations of and interviews with aides working in Ohio and California to explore the physical and emotional labor associated with the care of others.

In this collection of first-person narratives, we meet RNs working at the bedside, providing home care, managing hospital departments, teaching and doing research, lobbying for quality patient care, and campaigning for health care reform.

Florence Nightingale and her place in nursing history and in contemporary nursing discourse is a topic of continuing interest for nursing students, teachers, and professional associations. This book offers new scholarship on her work and legacy.

Confronting medical fraud and its economic, psychological, and social costs.

In this collection of first-person narratives, we meet RNs working at the bedside, providing home care, managing hospital departments, teaching and doing research, lobbying for quality patient care, and campaigning for health care reform.

How has France assure universal coverage while protecting patient and practitioner freedoms? What can Americans learn from the French experience, and what can the French learn from the U.S. example?

The Caregiver is an intelligent, beautifully reflective testimony to how family members turned caregivers become the ultimate advocates for their loved ones in the face of a disease with no cure.

"At present nursing homes are designed... like outmoded zoos. Residents are kept in small rooms, emotionally isolated. Occasionally they are visited by family members who reach through the bars and offer them treats. Aides keep their bodies clean...

A thoughtful and provocative critique of job training in the health care sector.

In With God on Our Side, Adam D. Reich tells the story of a five-year campaign to unionize Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, a Catholic hospital in California.

In this book, Suzanne Gordon draws on in-depth interviews with nurses and other health care professionals, research studies, and extensive firsthand reporting to better understand the myriad causes of and possible solutions to the current nursing crisis.

At a time when the world's wealthiest nations struggle to make health care and medicine available to everyone, why do resource-constrained countries make costly commitments to universal health coverage and AIDS treatment after transitioning to democracy? Joseph Harris explores the dynamics that made landmark policies possible in Thailand and...

This book shows how medical schools and teaching hospitals can implement the University of Toronto's successful model for interprofessional medical education, providing a step-by-step guide for deans, faculty, administrators, and health care providers.

The number of women practicing medicine in the United States has grown steadily since the late 1960s, with women now roughly at parity with men among entering medical students. Why did so many women enter American medicine? How are women faring...

This concise book chronicles the often turbulent history of screening mammography since its introduction in the early 1970s.

South African nurses care for patients in London, hospitals recruit Filipino nurses to Los Angeles, and Chinese nurses practice their profession in Ireland. In every industrialized country of the world, patients today increasingly find that the nurses...

In First, Do Less Harm, twelve health care professionals and researchers plus two former patients look at patient safety from a variety of perspectives, finding many of the proposed solutions to be inadequate or impractical.

This unsentimental but moving memoir of bridges two distinct periods in the history of the AIDS epidemic: the terrifying early years in which a diagnosis was a death sentence and ignorance too often eclipsed compassion, and the introduction of antiviral therapies that transformed AIDS into a chronic, though potentially manageable, disease.

Experts from the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands explore medical competency from different perspectives in order to spark thoughtful discussion and debate on the subject.

"This book is an in-depth analysis of how workers and recipients of home care craft flexibility and security in relation to one another within constraints defined by intersecting social inequalities, state funding, labor market policies and managerial rules"--

In Deadly River, Ralph R. Frerichs tells the story of the Haitian cholera epidemic, of a French disease detective determined to trace its origins so that he could help contain the spread and possibly eliminate the disease, and the political intrigue that has made that effort so difficult.

Beyond the Checklist argues that lives could be saved and patient care enhanced by adapting the relevant lessons of aviation safety and teamwork.