Lost in translation? 'Evidence' and the articulation of institutional logics in integrated care pathways: from positive to negative boundary object?

Socio-Organizational Dimensions: The Key to Advancing the Shared Care Record Agenda in Health and Social Care

Integrating health and social care delivery with the help of digital technologies is a grand challenge. We argue that previous attempts have largely failed to achieve their objectives because implementers and decision makers disregard the complex socio-organizational dimensions of change associated with initiatives. These include structural and organizational complexity inhibiting the development of shared care pathways; professional jurisdictions, interests, and expertise; and existing data and governance structures. We provide an overview of those dimensions that can inform strategic decisions going forward, thereby contributing to the chances of success of shared care initiatives.

Between a logic of disruption and a logic of continuation: Negotiating the legitimacy of algorithms used in automated clinical decision-making

In both popular and academic discussions of the use of algorithms in clinical practice, narratives often draw on the decisive potentialities of algorithms and come with the belief that algorithms will substantially transform healthcare. We suggest that this approach is associated with a logic of disruption. However, we argue that in clinical practice alongside this logic, another and less recognised logic exists, namely that of continuation: here the use of algorithms constitutes part of an established practice. Applying these logics as our analytical framing, we set out to explore how algorithms for clinical decision-making are enacted by political stakeholders, healthcare professionals, and patients, and in doing so, study how the legitimacy of delegating to an algorithm is negotiated and obtained. Empirically we draw on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in relation to attempts in Denmark to develop and implement Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) tools - involving algorithmic sorting - in clinical practice. We follow the work within two disease areas: heart rehabilitation and breast cancer follow-up care. We show how at the political level, algorithms constitute tools for disrupting inefficient work and unsystematic patient involvement, whereas closer to the clinical practice, algorithms constitute a continuation of standardised and evidence-based diagnostic procedures and a continuation of the physicians' expertise and authority. We argue that the co-existence of the two logics have implications as both provide a push towards the use of algorithms and how a logic of continuation may divert attention away from new issues introduced with automated digital decision-support systems.

Coding for quality? Accountability work in standardised cancer patient pathways (CPPs)

A vital part of standardised care pathways is the possibility to measure performance through different indicators - for example, codes. In this article, based on interviews with health personnel in a project evaluating the introduction of standardised cancer patient pathways (CPPs) in Norway, we explore the specific types of work involved when health personnel produce codes as (intended) signifiers of quality. All the types of work are dimensions of what we define as accountability work - work health personnel do to make the codes signifiers of quality of care in the CPP.Codes and coding practices raise questions of what quality of care represents and how it could and should be measured. Informants in our study advocate for coding as important work for the patient more than for 'the system'. This shows how organising for quality becomes a crucial part of professional work, expanding what it means to perform high quality care.

Ethnographic research as an evolving method for supporting healthcare improvement skills: a scoping review

BACKGROUND

The relationship between ethnography and healthcare improvement has been the subject of methodological concern. We conducted a scoping review of ethnographic literature on healthcare improvement topics, with two aims: (1) to describe current ethnographic methods and practices in healthcare improvement research and (2) to consider how these may affect habit and skill formation in the service of healthcare improvement.

METHODS

We used a scoping review methodology drawing on Arksey and O'Malley's methods and more recent guidance. We systematically searched electronic databases including Medline, PsychINFO, EMBASE and CINAHL for papers published between April 2013 - April 2018, with an update in September 2019. Information about study aims, methodology and recommendations for improvement were extracted. We used a theoretical framework outlining the habits and skills required for healthcare improvement to consider how ethnographic research may foster improvement skills.

RESULTS

We included 283 studies covering a wide range of healthcare topics and methods. Ethnography was commonly used for healthcare improvement research about vulnerable populations, e.g. elderly, psychiatry. Focussed ethnography was a prominent method, using a rapid feedback loop into improvement through focus and insider status. Ethnographic approaches such as the use of theory and focus on every day practices can foster improvement skills and habits such as creativity, learning and systems thinking.

CONCLUSIONS

We have identified that a variety of ethnographic approaches can be relevant to improvement. The skills and habits we identified may help ethnographers reflect on their approaches in planning healthcare improvement studies and guide peer-review in this field. An important area of future research will be to understand how ethnographic findings are received by decision-makers.

Implementing cancer patient pathways in Scandinavia how structuring might affect the acceptance of a politically imposed reform

Through political decisions all three Scandinavian countries implemented national reforms in cancer care introducing cancer patient pathways. Though resistance from the professional community is common to top-down initiatives, we recognized positive receptions of this reform in all three countries and professionals immediately contributed in implementing the core measures. The implementation of a similar reform in three countries with a similar health care system created a unique opportunity to look for shared characteristics. Combining analytical framework of institutional theory and research on policy implementation, we identified common patterns of structuring of the initial implementation: The hierarchical processes were combined with supplementary structures located both within and outside the formal management hierarchy. Some had a permanent character while others were more project-like or even resembled social movements. These hybrid structures made it possible for actors from high up in the hierarchy to communicate directly to actors at the operational hospital level. Across the cases, we also identified structural components acting together with the traditional command-control; negotiation, consensus and counseling. However, variations in the presence of these did not seem to have significant impact on processes causing decisions and acceptance. These variations may, however, influence the long-term practice and outcome of cancer-care pathway-reform. Knowledge from our study should be considered when orchestrating future health care reforms and especially top-down politically initiated reforms.

A genealogy of what nurses know about 'the good death': A socio-materialist perspective

In this article, we report the outcome of a sociological inquiry into nursing knowledge of death and dying, specifically 'the good death'. A genealogical approach informed by actor-network theory and appreciative inquiry were used to compose a broad socio-material account of how nurses concern themselves with the care of the dying and end-of-life care. Our enquiry revealed similarly to other studies, that there was no shared or overarching model of care. Key themes derived from nurses' translations of 'the good death' were re-presented pictorially as six pillars and two processes to comprise a new diagram of The Personalised Ideal Death.

Mind the Differences: How Diagnoses and Hospital Characteristics Influence Coordination in Cancer Patient Pathways

Integrated care pathway (ICP) is a prevailing concept in health care management including cancer care. Though substantial research has been conducted on ICPs knowledge is still deficient explaining how characteristics of diagnose, applied procedures, patient group and organizational context influence specific practicing of ICPs. We studied how coordination takes place in three cancer pathways in four Norwegian hospitals. We identified how core contextual variables of cancer pathways affect complexity and predictability of the performance of each pathway. Thus, we also point at differences in core preconditions for accomplishing coordination of the cancer pathways. In addition, the findings show that three different types of coordination dynamics are present in all three pathways to a divergent degree: programmed chains, consultative hubs and problem-solving webs. Pathway coordination also depends on hierarchical interaction. Lack of corresponding roles in the medical–professional and the administrative–institutional logics presents a challenge for coordination, both within and between hospitals. We recommend that further improvement of specific ICPs by paying attention to what should be standardized and what should be kept flexible, aligning semi-formal and formal structures to pathway processes and identify the professional cancer related background and management style required by the key-roles in pathway management.

Organizing work in local service implementation: an ethnographic study of nurses' contributions and competencies in implementing a municipal acute ward

BACKGROUND

The increased prevalence of chronic diseases and an ageing population challenge healthcare delivery, particularly hospital-based care. To address this issue, health policy aims to decentralize healthcare by transferring responsibility and introducing new services in primary healthcare. In-depth knowledge of associated implementation processes is crucial for health care managers, policymakers, and the health care personnel involved. In this article, we apply an ethnographic approach in a study of nurses' contributions to the implementation of a new inpatient service in an outpatient primary care emergency clinic and explore the competencies involved. The approach allowed us to explore the unexpressed yet significant effort, knowledge and competence of nurses that shaped the new service.

METHODS

The study combines observations (250 h) and several in situ interviews with healthcare personnel and individual in-depth interviews with nurses (n = 8) at the emergency clinic. In our analysis, we draw on a sociological perspective on healthcare work and organization that considers nursing a practice within the boundaries of clinical patient work, organizational structures, and managerial and professional requirements.

RESULTS

We describe the following three aspects of nurses' contributions to the implementation of the new service: (1) anticipating worst-case scenarios and taking responsibility for preventing them, (2) contributing coherence in patient care by ensuring that new and established procedures are interconnected, and (3) engaging in "invisible work". The nurses draw on their own experiences from their work as emergency nurses and knowledge of the local and regional contexts. They utilize their knowledge, competence, and organizing skills to influence the implementation process and ensure high-quality healthcare delivery in the extended service.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study illustrates that nurses' contributions are vital to coordinating and adjusting extended services. Organizing work, in addition to clinical work, is a crucial aspect of nursing work. It 'glues' the complex and varied components of the individual patient's services into coherent and holistic care trajectories. It is this organizing competence that nurses utilize when coordinating and adjusting extended services. We believe that nurses' organizing work is generally invaluable in implementing new services, although it has not been well emphasized in practice and research.

Exploring the triggering process of a cancer care reform in three Scandinavian countries

Cancer incidence is increasing, and cancer is a leading cause of death in the Scandinavian countries, and at the same time more efficient but very expensive new treatment options are available. Based on the increasing demand, high expectations and limited resources, crises in public legitimacy of cancer care evolved in the three Scandinavian countries. Similar cancer care reforms were introduced in the period 2007-2015 to address the crisis. In this article we explore processes triggering these reforms in countries with similar and well-developed health care systems. The common objective was the need to reduce time from referral to start treatment, and the tool introduced to accomplish this was integrated care pathways for cancer diagnosis, that is Cancer Patient Pathways. This study investigates the process by drawing on interviews with key actors and public documents. We identified three main logics in play; the economic-administrative, the medical and the patient-related logic and explored how institutional entrepreneurs skillfully aligned these logics. The article contributes by describing the triggering processes on politically initiated similar reforms in the three countries studied and also contributes to a better understanding on the orchestrating of politically initiated health care reforms with the intention to change medical practice in hospitals.

Interprofessional and multiprofessional approaches in quality improvement education

The imperative for all healthcare professionals to partake in quality improvement (QI) has resulted in the development of QI education programs with participants from different professional backgrounds. However, there is limited empirical and theoretical examination as to why, when and how interprofessional and multiprofessional education occurs in QI and the outcomes of these approaches. This paper reports on a qualitative collective case study of interprofessional and multiprofessional education in three longitudinal QI education programs. We conducted 58 interviews with learners, QI project coaches, program directors and institutional leads and 135 h of observations of in-class education sessions, and collected relevant documents such as course syllabi and handouts. We used an interpretive thematic analysis using a conventional and directed content analysis approach. In the directed content approach, we used sociology of professions theory with particular attention to professional socialization, hierarchies and boundaries in QI, to understand the ways in which individuals' professional backgrounds informed the planning and experiences of the QI education programs. Findings demonstrated that both interprofessional and multiprofessional education approaches were being used to achieve different education objectives. While each approach demonstrated positive learning and practice outcomes, tensions related to the different ways in which professional groups are engaging in QI, power dynamics between professional groups, and disconnects between curricula and practice existed. Further conceptual clarity is essential for a more informed discussion about interprofessional and multiprofessional education approaches in QI and explicit attention is needed to professional processes and tensions, to optimize the impact of education on practice.

Integrated care pathway for breast cancer: A relational and geographical approach

This paper examines how to apply a spatial approach (relational and geographical) to care pathways for their better integration within their territories. Based on the case study of a senology department of a French Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment and Research Centre, we apply a mixed research methodology using qualitative data (synthesis documents, meeting minutes, in-depth interviews) and quantitative data relating to the mobility and geographical location of a cohort of 1798 patients treated in this centre. Our results show the inseparable nature of the relational dimension and the geographical approach to move towards greater integration of breast cancer care pathways. This inseparability is constructed from the proposal of a method for mapping the integrated care pathways in their territories. This method, applied to our case study, allows us to identify four main categories of pathways for the cohort of patients studied.

Implementing disruptive technological change in UK healthcare: exploring development of a smart phone app for remote patient monitoring as a boundary object using qualitative methods

PURPOSE

Developing technological innovations in healthcare is made complex and difficult due to effects upon the practices of professional, managerial and other stakeholders. Drawing upon the concept of boundary object, this paper explores the challenges of achieving effective collaboration in the development and use of a novel healthcare innovation in the English healthcare system.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

A case study is presented of the development and implementation of a smart phone application (app) for use by rheumatoid arthritis patients. Over a two-year period (2015-2017), qualitative data from recorded clinical consultations (n = 17), semi-structured interviews (n = 63) and two focus groups (n = 13) were obtained from participants involved in the app's development and use (clinicians, patients, researchers, practitioners, IT specialists and managers).

FINDINGS

The case focuses on the use of the app and its outputs as a system of inter-connected boundary objects. The analysis highlights the challenges overcome in the innovation's development and how knowledge sharing between patients and clinicians was enhanced, altering the nature of the clinical consultation. It also shows how conditions surrounding the innovation both enabled its development and inhibited its wider scale-up.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

By recognizing that technological artefacts can simultaneously enable and inhibit collaboration, this paper highlights the need to overcome tensions between the transformative capability of such healthcare innovations and the inhibiting effects simultaneously created on change at a wider system level.

Numbers, graphs and words - do we really understand the lab test results accessible via the patient portals?

BACKGROUND

The heavy reliance on remote patient care (RPC) during the COVID-19 health crisis may have expedited the emergence of digital health tools that can contribute to safely and effectively moving the locus of care from the hospital to the community. Understanding how laypersons interpret the personal health information accessible to them via electronic patient records (EPRs) is crucial to healthcare planning and the design of services. Yet we still know little about how the format in which personal medical information is presented in the EPR (numerically, verbally, or graphically) affects individuals' understanding of the information, their assessment of its gravity, and the course of action they choose in response.

METHODS

We employed an online questionnaire to assess respondents' reactions to 10 medical decision-making scenarios, where the same information was presented using different formats. In each scenario, respondents were presented with real (anonymized) patient lab results using either numeric expressions, graphs, or verbal expressions. Participants were asked to assess the gravity of the hypothetical patient's condition and the course of action they would follow if they were that patient. The questionnaire was distributed to more than 300 participants, of whom 225 submitted usable responses.

RESULTS

Laypersons were more likely to overestimate the gravity of the information when it was presented either numerically or graphically compared to the narrative format. High perceived gravity was most likely to produce an inclination to actively seek medical attention, even when unwarranted. "Don't know" responses were most likely to produce an inclination to either search the Internet or wait for the doctor to call.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

We discuss the study's implications for the effective design of lab results in the patient portals. We suggest (1) that graphs, tables, and charts would be easier to interpret if coupled with a brief verbal explanation; (2) that highlighting an overall level of urgency may be more helpful than indicating a diversion from the norm; and (3) that statements of results should include the type of follow-up required.

Exploring variation in the use of feedback from national clinical audits: a realist investigation

Background

National Clinical Audits (NCAs) are a well-established quality improvement strategy used in healthcare settings. Significant resources, including clinicians’ time, are invested in participating in NCAs, yet there is variation in the extent to which the resulting feedback stimulates quality improvement. The aim of this study was to explore the reasons behind this variation.

Methods

We used realist evaluation to interrogate how context shapes the mechanisms through which NCAs work (or not) to stimulate quality improvement. Fifty-four interviews were conducted with doctors, nurses, audit clerks and other staff working with NCAs across five healthcare providers in England. In line with realist principles we scrutinised the data to identify how and why providers responded to NCA feedback (mechanisms), the circumstances that supported or constrained provider responses (context), and what happened as a result of the interactions between mechanisms and context (outcomes). We summarised our findings as Context+Mechanism = Outcome configurations.

Results

We identified five mechanisms that explained provider interactions with NCA feedback: reputation, professionalism, competition, incentives, and professional development. Professionalism and incentives underpinned most frequent interaction with feedback, providing opportunities to stimulate quality improvement. Feedback was used routinely in these ways where it was generated from data stored in local databases before upload to NCA suppliers. Local databases enabled staff to access data easily, customise feedback and, importantly, the data were trusted as accurate, due to the skills and experience of staff supporting audit participation. Feedback produced by NCA suppliers, which included national comparator data, was used in a more limited capacity across providers. Challenges accessing supplier data in a timely way and concerns about the quality of data submitted across providers were reported to constrain use of this mode of feedback.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that there are a number of mechanisms that underpin healthcare providers’ interactions with NCA feedback. However, there is variation in the mode, frequency and impact of these interactions. Feedback was used most routinely, providing opportunities to stimulate quality improvement, within clinical services resourced to collect accurate data and to maintain local databases from which feedback could be customised for the needs of the service.

Rethinking Integrated Care: A Systematic Hermeneutic Review of the Literature on Integrated Care Strategies and Concepts

Policy Points Integrated care is best understood as an emergent set of practices intrinsically shaped by contextual factors, and not as a single intervention to achieve predetermined outcomes. Policies to integrate care that facilitate person-centered, relationship-based care can potentially contribute to (but not determine) improved patient experiences. There can be an association between improved patient experiences and system benefits, but these outcomes of integrated care are of different orders and do not necessarily align. Policymakers should critically evaluate integrated care programs to identify and manage conflicts and tensions between a program's aims and the context in which it is being introduced.

CONTEXT

Integrated care is a broad concept, used to describe a connected set of clinical, organizational, and policy changes aimed at improving service efficiency, patient experience, and outcomes. Despite examples of successful integrated care systems, evidence for consistent and reproducible benefits remains elusive. We sought to inform policy and practice by conducting a systematic hermeneutic review of literature covering integrated care strategies and concepts.

METHODS

We used an emergent search strategy to identify 71 sources that considered what integrated care means and/or tested models of integrated care. Our analysis entailed (1) comparison of strategies and concepts of integrated care, (2) tracing common story lines across multiple sources, (3) developing a taxonomy of literature, and (4) generating a novel interpretation of the heterogeneous strategies and concepts of integrated care.

FINDINGS

We identified four perspectives on integrated care: patients' perspectives, organizational strategies and policies, conceptual models, and theoretical and critical analysis. We subdivided the strategies into four framings of how integrated care manifests and is understood to effect change. Common across empirical and conceptual work was a concern with unity in the face of fragmentation as well as the development and application of similar methods to achieve this unity. However, integrated care programs did not necessarily lead to the changes intended in experiences and outcomes. We attribute this gap between expectations and results, in part, to significant misalignment between the aspiration for unity underpinning conceptual models on the one hand and the multiplicity of practical application of strategies to integrate care on the other.

CONCLUSIONS

Those looking for universal answers to narrow questions about whether integrated care "works" are likely to remain disappointed. Models of integrated care need to be valued for their heuristic rather than predictive powers, and integration understood as emerging from particular as well as common contexts.

'It's all about time': Temporal effects of cancer pathway introduction in treatment and care

In the last decades, increased focus on time optimisation in healthcare services has led to introduction of new standardising technologies that alter the temporal structures of treatment-trajectories and work-practices. This paper presents a qualitative study of the temporal effects of introducing cancer pathways at a university hospital and a cancer rehabilitation centre in Denmark. Building analytically on a combination of Eviatar Zerubavel's and Norbert Elias's sociological studies on time, we show how the introduction of pathways has intensified the separation of cancer treatment and psychosocial support into two decoupled but mutually interdependent temporal orders. We furthermore demonstrate how pathway introduction has increased the focus on time as an overarching quality standard for treatment and care across organisational boundaries. Based on this analysis, we suggest that to understand current standardisation and optimisation processes and their unintended organisational effects, temporality should be treated as a research object of its own. Rather than analytically pre-empting temporal dichotomies or a priori assigning normativity to particular temporal structures, we call for thorough empirical investigation of temporal patterns in and between healthcare organisations.

Boundary Objects as a Learning Mechanism for Sustainable Development Goals—A Case Study of a Japanese Company in the Chemical Industry

This paper explores the role of boundary objects in the translation and transformation process of a sustainability concept—Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs)—into a firm’s business practices. The qualitative case study describes the experience where a Japanese company successfully implemented SDGs and generated product innovations through its learning process. The findings of the study identify four types of effective boundary objects: (1) organizational repository boundary objects, including historical contextualization and best practices; (2) a standardized form of boundary objects based on certification process of environmental sustainable products; (3) an ideal type of boundary objects through digital forum based learning platform; (4) a “powerful” community of practices that come across hierarchy and functions. This paper extends the literature by showing the interconnectedness of boundary objects, the possible negative side of technology based boundary objects, and the significance of community of practices as a monitoring and coordination tool to ensure the effective operation and measurement of sustainability.

Organisational strategies and practices to improve care using patient experience data in acute NHS hospital trusts: an ethnographic study

Background

Although NHS organisations have access to a wealth of patient experience data in various formats (e.g. surveys, complaints and compliments, patient stories and online feedback), not enough attention has been paid to understanding how patient experience data translate into improvements in the quality of care.

Objectives

The main aim was to explore and enhance the organisational strategies and practices through which patient experience data are collected, interpreted and translated into quality improvements in acute NHS hospital trusts in England. The secondary aim was to understand and optimise the involvement and responsibilities of nurses in senior managerial and front-line roles with respect to such data.

Design

The study comprised two phases. Phase 1 consisted of an actor–network theory-informed ethnographic study of the ‘journeys’ of patient experience data in five acute NHS hospital trusts, particularly in cancer and dementia services. Phase 2 comprised a series of Joint Interpretive Forums (one cross-site and one at each trust) bringing together different stakeholders (e.g. members of staff, national policy-makers, patient/carer representatives) to distil generalisable principles to optimise the use of patient experience data.

Setting

Five purposively sampled acute NHS hospital trusts in England.

Results

The analysis points to five key themes: (1) each type of data takes multiple forms and can generate improvements in care at different stages in its complex ‘journey’ through an organisation; (2) where patient experience data participate in interactions (with human and/or non-human actors) characterised by the qualities of autonomy (to act/trigger action), authority (to ensure that action is seen as legitimate) and contextualisation (to act meaningfully in a given situation), quality improvements can take place in response to the data; (3) nurses largely have ultimate responsibility for the way in which data are collected, interpreted and used to improve care, but other professionals also have important roles that could be explored further; (4) formalised quality improvement can confer authority to patient experience data work, but the data also lead to action for improvement in ways that are not formally identified as quality improvement; (5) sense-making exercises with study participants can support organisational learning.

Limitations

Patient experience data practices at trusts performing ‘worse than others’ on the Care Quality Commission scores were not examined. Although attention was paid to the views of patients and carers, the study focused largely on organisational processes and practices. Finally, the processes and practices around other types of data were not examined, such as patient safety and clinical outcomes data, or how these interact with patient experience data.

Conclusions

NHS organisations may find it useful to identify the local roles and processes that bring about autonomy, authority and contextualisation in patient experience data work. The composition and expertise of patient experience teams could better complement the largely invisible nursing work that currently accounts for a large part of the translation of data into care improvements.

Future work

To date, future work has not been planned.

Study registration

NIHR 188882.

Funding

The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

White Coats at the Coalface: The Standardizing Work of Professionals at the Frontline

This study advances theory on professionals by introducing a novel ‘coalface perspective’ to study frontline professionals’ standardizing work. Our multimethod quantitative and qualitative approach explores when, why and how medical professionals in German university hospitals actively maintain care pathway enactment – a technique to standardize day-to-day medical work – in their everyday patient treatment. Professionals’ actively standardizing their work is an understudied yet highly relevant phenomenon that the established ‘autonomy perspective’ – which covers how professionals resist standardization – falls short of explaining. Introducing a coalface perspective overcomes this shortcoming by uncovering novel links between professionals’ day-to-day problem-driven motivations for standardizing work, the characteristics of everyday situations of frontline professional work and practices of standardizing work at the frontline. This study has implications for research on frontline professionals and coalface-perspective research in general.

From boundary object to boundary subject; the role of the patient in coordination across complex systems of care during hospital discharge

Advocates for patient involvement argue that seeking the active contribution of patients and families in the coordination of care can help mitigate system complexity, and lead to improvements in quality. However, sociological and organisational research has identified barriers to involving patients in care planning, not least the power of, and boundaries between, multiple professional groups. This study draws on literature from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to explore the patients' role in coordinating care across professional-practice boundaries in complex care systems. Findings are drawn from a two-year ethnographic study (including 69 qualitative interviews) of hospital discharge following hip-fracture care and describe the changing role of the patient as they move out of hospital into community settings. Findings describe how 'the patient' plays a relatively passive role as boundary object while recovering from surgery within hospital, where inter-professional coordination was prescribed by evidence-based guidelines, leaving little space for patient voice. As discharge planning begins, patient involvement is both encouraged and contested by different professional groups, with varying levels of commitment to include patient subjectivities in care. As patients move into home and community settings, they, their families and carers play an increasingly active role in coordination, often in light of perceived gaps in coordination between care providers. This paper argues that whilst the need for patient and carer involvement is becoming increasingly evident, such involvement plays into, and is mediated through, existing relations between professional and practice groups. Patient and carer involvement is therefore not straightforward and should be considered across the health and care systems in order to meaningfully improve care quality.

Policies Make Coherent Care Pathways a Personal Responsibility for Clinicians: A Discourse Analysis of Policy Documents about Coordinators in Hospitals

INTRODUCTION

In response to increase of patients with complex conditions, policies prescribe measures for improving continuity of care. This study investigates policies introducing coordinator roles in Norwegian hospitals that have proven challenging to implement.

METHODS

This qualitative study of policy documents employed a discourse analysis inspired by Carol Bacchi's 'What's the problem represented to be?'. We analysed six legal documents (2011-2016) and selected parts of four whitepapers presenting the statutory patient care coordinator and contact physician roles in hospitals.

RESULTS

The 'problem' represented in the policies is lack of coherent pathways and lack of stable responsible professionals. Extended personal responsibility for clinical personnel as coordinators is the prescribed solution. Their duties are described in terms of ideals for coherent pathways across conditions and contexts. System measures to support and orchestrate the individual patient's pathway (e.g. resources, infrastructure) are scarcely addressed.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

We suggest that the policies' construction of the 'problem' as a responsibility issue, result in that neither diversity of patients' coordination needs, nor heterogeneity of hospital contexts regarding necessary system support for coordinators, is set on the agenda. Adoption of rhetoric from diagnosis-specific standardized pathways obscures unique challenges in creating coherent pathways for patients with complex needs.

For society, state and self: juggling the logics of professionalism in general practice appraisal

Sociologists repeatedly appeal to notions of altruism, bureaucratisation and self interest in their efforts to explain the changing place of the professions in contemporary society. We treat these three readings as institutional logics that are key to understanding the way in which doctors respond to the appraisal system at the heart of the UK's approach to revalidation. Our analysis of a survey of 998 general practitioners (GPs) working in Wales finds an altruistic commitment to learning and improvement, bureaucratic demands for reporting information and self-regarding resentment of changes in the occupational package provided by general practice. But the data also demonstrate that the maintenance of the appraisal regime is dependent on the preparedness and capacity of individual GPs to do micro-level institutional work on all fronts.