PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Elizabeth Dayton

Publications and source records attributed to Elizabeth Dayton.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Organizational silence and hidden threats to patient safety.

Organizational silence refers to a collective-level phenomenon of saying or doing very little in response to significant problems that face an organization. The paper focuses on some of the less obvious factors contributing to organizational silence that can serve as threats to patient safety. Converging areas of research from the cognitive, social, and organizational sciences and the study of sociotechnical systems help to identify some of the underlying factors that serve to shape and sustain organizational silence. These factors have been organized under three levels of analysis: (1) individual factors, including the availability heuristic, self-serving bias, and the status quo trap; (2) social factors, including conformity, diffusion of responsibility, and microclimates of distrust; and (3) organizational factors, including unchallenged beliefs, the good provider fallacy, and neglect of the interdependencies. Finally, a new role for health care leaders and managers is envisioned. It is one that places high value on understanding system complexity and does not take comfort in organizational silence.

Group Processes↗

National data for monitoring and evaluating racial and ethnic health inequities: where do we go from here?

The elimination of racial and ethnic health inequities has become a central focus of health education and the national health agenda. The documentation of an increasing gap in life expectancy and other health outcomes suggests the need for more effective strategies to eliminate health inequities, which can be informed by better monitoring and evaluation data. Although the sophistication and volume of health data available have increased dramatically in recent years, this article examines the quality of the current data collected to achieve the goal of eliminating racial and ethnic health inequities. This article explores several key aspects of data to inform addressing inequities including terminology, the role of data, and explanations of the problem. The authors conclude with recommendations for refining data collection to facilitate the elimination of racial and ethnic health inequities and suggest how the Society for Public Health Education can become a more central figure in our national efforts.

Ethnicity↗

The quality challenge.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Health Services Accessibility↗

Racial and ethnic differences in patient assessments of interactions with providers: disparities or measurement biases?

Patient assessment surveys have established a primary role in health care quality measurement as evidence has shown that information from patients can affect quality improvement for practitioners and lead to positive marketwide changes. This article presents findings from the recently released National Healthcare Disparities Report revealing that although most clinical quality and access indicators show superior health care for non-Hispanic whites compared with blacks and Hispanics, blacks and Hispanics assess their interactions with providers more positively than non-Hispanic whites do. The article explores possible explanations for these racial/ethnic differences, including potential pitfalls in survey design that draw biased responses by race/ethnicity. The article then suggests strategies for refining future research on racial/ethnic disparities based on patient assessment of health care.

Adolescent↗

Compiling the evidence: the National Healthcare Disparities Reports.

Disparities in health care have been described extensively in the literature. The next step in resolving this national problem is to develop the necessary infrastructure for monitoring and tracking disparities. The congressionally mandated National Healthcare Disparities Report begins to build this infrastructure. The 2003 report addressed many of the methodological challenges inherent in measuring disparities. The recently released 2004 report continues the process by summarizing the status of U.S. health care disparities and beginning to track changes over time. Both reports emphasize the need to integrate activities to reduce disparities and to improve the quality of health care.

Data Collection↗