School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 207
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Awareness and practice of patient's rights law in Lithuania.
    Ducinskiene, D ; Vladickiene, J ; Kalediene, R ; Haapala, I (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2006-09-02)
    BACKGROUND: Patient's rights law is intended to secure good medical practice, but it can also serve to improve understanding between patients and medical staff if both were aware of their rights. METHODS: Awareness and practice of the new patient's rights law in Lithuanian health care institutions was explored through a survey of 255 medical staff and 451 patients in the four Kaunas city medical units in 2002. Participation rates were 74% and 66%, respectively. RESULTS: Majority of the medical staff (85%) and little over one half of the patients (56%) had heard or read about the Law on Patient's Rights (p < 0.001). Only 50% of professionals compared to 69% of patients thought information for patients about diagnosis, treatment results and alternative treatments is necessary (p < 0.001). A clear discrepancy was indicated between physicians informing the patients (80%-98% of physicians) and patients actually knowing (37%-54%) their treatment prognosis, disease complications or possible alternative treatment methods. CONCLUSION: These results suggest a need for awareness-raising among patients to improve the practical implementation of the Patient's Rights Law in Lithuania.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Measuring emotional and social wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations: an analysis of a Negative Life Events Scale.
    Kowal, E ; Gunthorpe, W ; Bailie, RS (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2007-11-14)
    Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians experience widespread socioeconomic disadvantage and health inequality. In an attempt to make Indigenous health research more culturally-appropriate, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have called for more attention to the concept of emotional and social wellbeing (ESWB). Although it has been widely recognised that ESWB is of crucial importance to the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, there is little consensus on how to measure in Indigenous populations, hampering efforts to better understand and improve the psychosocial determinants of health. This paper explores the policy and political context to this situation, and suggests ways to move forward. The second part of the paper explores how scales can be evaluated in a health research setting, including assessments of endorsement, discrimination, internal and external reliability.We then evaluate the use of a measure of stressful life events, the Negative Life Events Scale (NLES), in two samples of Aboriginal people living in remote communities in the Northern Territory of Australia. We argue that the Negative Life Events Scale is a promising assessment of psychosocial wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. Evaluation of the scale and its performance in other samples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations is imperative if we hope to develop better, rather than more, scales for measuring ESWB among Indigenous Australians. Only then will it be possible to establish standardized methods of measuring ESWB and develop a body of comparable literature that can guide both a better understanding of ESWB, and evaluation of interventions designed to improve the psychosocial health of Indigenous populations and decrease health inequalities.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Decentralisation and conflict management in Indonesia and Nigeria
    Diprose, R ; Ukiwo, U (Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, University of Oxford, 2008)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Physical Safety and Security: A proposal for internationally comparable indicators of violence
    Diprose, R ( 2007)
    Violence impedes human freedom to live safely and securely and can sustain poverty traps in many communities. One of the challenges for academics, policy makers, and practitioners working broadly in programmes aimed at poverty alleviation, including violence prevention, is the lack of reliable and comparable data on the incidence and nature of violence. This paper proposes a household survey module for a multidimensional poverty questionnaire which can be used to complement the available data on the incidence of violence against property and the person, as well as perceptions of security and safety. Violence and poverty are inextricably linked, although the direction of causality is contested if not circular. The module uses standardised definitions which are clear and can be translated cross-culturally and a clear disaggregation of different types of interpersonal violence (not including self-harm) which bridges the crime–conflict nexus.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Child support and housing outcomes
    Natalier, K ; Walter, M ; Wulff, M ; Reynolds, M ; Hewitt, B ( 2008-03-01)
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Introduction to the Review
    Stavins, R ; Carraro, C ; Kolstad, C ; Deeming, C ; Smyth, P (University of Chicago Press, 2007-01-01)
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    The Place of Age in Organisational Policymaking: Evidence from an Australian Qualitative Study
    Brooke, E ; Healy, P ; Jiang, J ; TAYLOR, P ; Kumashiro, M (CRC Press (Taylor & Francis Group), 2008)
    This report presents findings of qualitative research in four case study organizations as part of a larger study, Redesigning Work for an Ageing Society (RW4AS) Project, being undertaken by Business Work and Ageing Centre for Research, Swinburne University. The study will identify factors transforming the nature of work and posing risks to the work ability of an ageing workforce, examine existing policies and practice in managing workforce ageing in public and private organizations and test the applicability of the Work Ability model to Australian circumstances. The research found that changes engendered by globalization shaped the organization of work and the pressures experienced by individual workers. All the organizations function in a globalised, highly competitive market, are adopting new technologies and are increasingly reliant on work intensification and casualization of labour. They had not come to terms with the need to retain their ageing workers as manifested by short term policy responses rather than proactive strategies. The areas in which ageing workers experienced difficulties, such as their competence with new technologies, changing work structures and occupational health risks indicate alignments between work ability domains and managing the vulnerabilities of ageing Australian workers in changing organizational environments.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Are European older workers on the verge of a ‘golden age’ of employment opportunities?
    TAYLOR, P ; Chiva, A ; Manthorpe, A (Open University Press, 2008)
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    European Union Policy for Older workers
    TAYLOR, P ; Dykstra, D (Knaw Press, 2008)
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    The promise of ageing labour forces
    TAYLOR, P ; Taylor, P (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)