PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

K D Carson

Publications and source records attributed to K D Carson.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Teamwork or interdepartmental cooperation: which is more important in the health care setting?

A survey of 75 nursing department employees was conducted to assess the relative importance of across-department and within-team cooperation on workplace outcomes. As compared with within-team cooperation, across-department cooperation is more positively associated with procedural justice, interpersonal justice, satisfaction with supervisor feedback, supervisory rating, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Across-department cooperation is more negatively associated with role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, job tension, and job withdrawal intentions. No significant correlational differences are noted for either distributive justice or politics. Type of cooperation also was analyzed using hierarchical regression, and more variance was explained in across-department cooperation than within-team cooperation by organizational variables. Based on these results, it may be more important for the health care manager to attend to issues of interdepartmental cooperation rather than to internal team dynamics.

Cooperative Behavior↗
PubMed1998

Toward understanding the patient's perception of quality.

Patients often don't have the technical competence to judge the quality of medical care. Therefore, they rely on different criteria than do professionals in assessing quality. They perceive quality as a gestalt of experiences influenced by such issues as empathy, integrity, and appearance of competency. Patients do not complain about service quality when it is appropriately provided. But to satisfy the consumer, providers must go beyond being reliable, polite, and honest. They must provide prompt services, be approachable, and provide individualized attention. To ultimately delight consumers, however, providers must meet the unarticulated needs of the patient.

Humans↗
PubMed1998

Nursing supervisors' view through rose-colored glasses: an overestimation of employees' positive attitudes.

Nursing supervisors, nurses, and nursing aides were surveyed regarding attitudes about their shared work environment. Results support the hypotheses indicating that supervisors will generally be more positive in their perceptions than will employees at lower levels in the organization. In this study, nursing supervisors reported higher levels of distributive justice and team cooperation as well as a more appropriate patient-to-staff ratio than did nurses and nursing aides. Further, the nurses reported significantly higher levels of politics than the supervisors. Suggestions for developing perceptions more realistic and consistent with subordinates are offered.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1998

Humidification during anesthesia.

Humidification during anesthesia is important to prevent adverse changes in the upper airways and possible pulmonary compromise. These changes may take place in less than 1 hour using dry nonhumidified anesthetic gases. Consequently, some method of humidification should be employed for all but the shortest of surgical procedures requiring general anesthesia. Methods of humidification include the anesthesia breathing system itself, passive humidification or conservation of moisture (the use of HMEs), and active humidification. The simplest system providing good levels of humidification and warming of anesthetic gases is the Circle system, which uses a fresh gas flow of less than 2 L/min. Its success can be further enhanced by use of a coaxial circuit. The minimum levels of water output or humidity required in the breathing circuit remain controversial. It may be preferable to have a gas with a lower temperature and higher relative humidity because a warmer gas that is less saturated may result in increased desiccation from the upper airways. Humidification for neonatal and pediatric patients requires special consideration of resistance, work of breathing, and dead space. Further work is necessary with regard to the use of HMEs in this population of patients undergoing general anesthesia.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Total quality training in the hospital setting.

Total quality management requires a commitment to continuous quality improvement and a complete transformation of a healthcare organization's operations. An ongoing process, it prescribes training at all levels of an organization's hierarchy as well as the routine evaluation of the training programs' quality.

Inservice Training↗
PubMed1994

Strategic options for hospitals based on ownership type.

Strategic planning for hospitals is difficult in this era of healthcare reform. This article offers strategy options based on an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of three types of hospitals.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMed1993

Increasing the effectiveness of healthcare managers. Horizontal and vertical information linkages.

In the healthcare industry, there is an increasing number of managers who operate clinics geographically separated from the administration and from other managers. Physical distance creates barriers to communication and also inhibits psychological attachment to the healthcare organization. This can result in dysfunctional management styles, with managers appearing passive, overly independent, or isolated. By choosing the best communication medium as well as the most appropriate information linkages, the administrator can improve the effectiveness of managers. Specific intervention strategies are offered for correcting dysfunctional behaviors in healthcare settings.

Ambulatory Care Facilities↗