First published in 1992, Quality and Regulation in Health Care employs socio-legal ideas concerning regulation to examine the methods used to influence the quality of health care in the US, UK, and Western Europe. Throughout the Western world, health care systems, both public and private, are grappling with the problems of assuring quality while containing costs. On the one hand, governments and insurers argue that there must be some limit to the apparently endless growth of healt...

Covering the entire research process – from understanding theory to writing up your project – this book provides you with an easy-to-follow introduction to qualitative methods in nursing and healthcare.It offers straightforward guidance on key issues such as ethics and equips you with practical tools for approaching steps like searching and reviewing the literature. It also:Provides a clear historical overview of nursing and healthcare research, helping you deepen you...

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Health Research is a comprehensive and authoritative source on qualitative research methods.The Handbook compiles accessible yet vigorous academic contributions by respected academics from the fast-growing field of qualitative methods in health research and consists of:- A series of case studies in the ways in which qualitative methods have contributed to the development of thinking in fields relevant to policy and practi...

The British National Health Service celebrated its thirtieth birthday in 1978. A Royal Commission was set up to consider the role of the National Health Service, and it is the debates that surrounded this Royal Commission that form the basis for the twelve topics covered by this book.The economic difficulties that the country was facing when this book was published in 1979 highlighted the widely publicised malaise in the health service, and exposed the limitation of a set of ideals...

First published in 1998, this edited volume reflected on the role of universities and aimed to improve the preparation of social welfare professionals by the University of Warsaw for employment in the new market-oriented society that was being created in Poland after the end of ‘real socialism’ in 1989. Many of its articles were previously published in Polish and were published, revised and updated, in English for the first time in this collection. The contributors discuss two key issues. ...

Robert Dingwall's classic and original study of the training of health visitors (public health nurses) in the UK is now available in a convenient ebook edition, featuring linked notes, all tables from the print edition, linked subject index, and active Contents. This book has not been easily available in print for many years but has long been regarded as an important contribution to the study of professional socialization. It was one of the first studies to incorporate ideas from ethnometh...

This classic study of law and social work in action (by Robert Dingwall, John Eekelaar and Topsy Murray) is based on the most extensive investigation of child abuse and neglect ever carried out in Great Britain. The authors followed the course of numerous cases from the first detection of ill-treatment to the resolution (or otherwise) of the problem. Famous for coining the much-used (and misunderstood) phrase "the rule of optimism," this book is updated with an extensive Postscript from 19...

This title was first published in 2001. With critical observations on past approaches to this issue and the proposal of alternative lines of inquiry, this book is concerned with the attempts made by sociologists (and to a lesser extent, doctors) to account for patterns of social conduct that are observably associated with periods of illness. The author argues that medical sociologists have confused the proper realms of biological and sociological inquiry, and that it is this confusion that...

Who is Howard S. Becker? This book traces his career, examining his work and contributions to the field of sociology. Themes covered include Becker’s theoretical conceptualizations, approaches, teaching style, and positioning in the intellectual milieu. Translated from French by sociologist Robert Dingwall, the English edition benefits from an editorial introduction and additional referencing, as well as a new foreword by Becker himself.

Over the past 30 years Robert Dingwall has published an influential series of articles on the professions, especially law and medicine. This represents a substantial and coherent body of work in an important sub-discipline of sociology. This volume assembles the best of these writings in one single accessible place. The ten essays are republished in their original form, each bearing the traces of the time and place it was written. In sum, they provide a fascinating account of an academic j...

This title was first published in 2001. A classic ethnographic study of the interactions between paediatricians and parents of children thought to be neurologically handicapped. Strong used this work to systematize the often chaotic ideas of Erving Goffman, to explore the connections between micro and macro analysis in sociology and to reflect on the nature of medical practice in modern liberal societies. The book stands as a testament to Strong’s pursuit of methodological rigour in qualit...

A social science which has become so remote from the society which pays for its upkeep is ultimately doomed, threatened less by repression than by intellectual contempt and financial neglect. This is the message of the authors of this book in this reassessment of the evolution and present state of British sociology.Their investigation analyses the discipline as a social institution, whose product is inexorably shaped by the everyday circumstances of its producers; it is the concret...