Hospital organization: A progress report on the Brunel Health Services Organization Project

Description

This book presents a first full report of the important work being undertaken by the Health Services Organization Research Unit at Brunel University. During the first four years of its life this Unit has explored a very wide spectrum of hospital organization in the individual hospital, the Hospital Group and the Hospital Region, working at successive stages with doctors, nurses, administrators and representatives of most of the paramedical and technical professions. It shows how existing forms of organization of the various groups of staff in hospitals can be construed in terms of a large number of 'building-blocks', each designed to meet various social, technical and professional needs. It goes on to discuss how these same elements of organization may be used more generally in the construction of large-scale health organizations. For the past year the Unit has been making a substantial contribution to government plans for the unified Health Service to be introduced in 1974. This book therefore forms essential preparatory reading for anyone who is likely to be significantly concerned in this particular reorganization. More generally the book will be of interest to all those actively involved in health service administration—particularly medical and non-medical administrators, community physicians and senior nurses. It will also be an important source book for students of social administration and, because of the insight it provides into the employment of professional people in hierarchic and other forms of organization—for sociologists, and organization theorists.