School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemAwareness and practice of patient's rights law in Lithuania.(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.
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ItemMeasuring emotional and social wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations: an analysis of a Negative Life Events Scale.(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.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAge Discrimination in the Labour Market and Policy Responses: The Situation in the United Kingdom(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2003-01-01)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableOlder workers, employer behaviour and public policy(PALGRAVE MACMILLAN LTD, 2003-10)
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ItemOlder workers and employment: managing age relations(CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2005-05)This article reports the findings of research into the functioning of companies' and organisations' internal labour markets. Four case studies of Australian and United Kingdom public and private sector organisations have been undertaken with two principal aims: to elucidate the challenges and barriers to the employment of older workers, and to demonstrate the benefits to business and to older workers of age-aware human resource management policies. In each of the case-study organisations, age-related assumptions affected the management of knowledge and skills and the ways in which older and younger workers were employed. Managing age relations in organisations requires an understanding of the ways in which workers of different ages are perceived and how these associate with sub-optimal deployment. The article concludes by suggesting that policies directed at older workers alone will ignore the age and age-group dynamics that pervade workplaces. To promote the better deployment of younger and older individuals in rapidly transforming organisations, there is a need for policy makers, employers and employees to be attentive to the age-group relationships that currently inform workplace practices. Organisations cannot ignore these age dynamics, but should adopt ‘age aware’ rather than ‘age free’ practices. The recommended human-resources approach would attend to individuals' capabilities and not stereotype them by age.
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ItemAge, labour market conditions and male suicide rates in selected countries(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2003-01-01)This study examined the relationship between suicide rates among men since 1975 and rates of unemployment and labour force participation in 20 countries. Previous research has found statistically significant correlations between suicide and unemployment rates over time among young people in a number of countries. This study has extended this research to include different age groups of men. The findings for younger workers largely confirm the findings of previous studies. Among older workers, however, unemployment and suicide rates are largely unrelated, notable exceptions including Japan and the USA. The implications of this finding for policy making towards older workers are discussed.
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ItemAge and Work: International Perspectives(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2004-04)The need to extend working life is being increasingly emphasised in policy debates in the developed economies. Recent years have seen the emergence of new policies on work on retirement aimed at closing off ‘early exit’ pathways and promoting the employment of older workers. This article summarises recent developments in selected countries, concluding that the effectiveness of policy making to date is difficult to gauge, that as yet, it lacks the necessary sophistication and that, as a consequence, it may not provide appropriate pathways for older workers or employers.
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ItemIntroduction: Themed section on Age, Employment and Policy(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2004-04)Older workers have moved up the policy agenda within the industrialised nations. In the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, policy-making in much of the European Union emphasised the virtues of early retirement, partly as a response to high levels of unemployment. Since the late 1990s, there has been an increasing emphasis on overcoming age barriers in the labour market and on extending working life. This has been driven by concerns over ageing and shrinking labour forces, the sustainability of public pension systems, evidence of age discrimination in the labour market and the potential influence of the ‘grey’ voter. By contrast in the USA, the pronounced trend towards ‘early exit’ which has characterised Europe never existed. This is even more the case in Japan.
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ItemAgeing and Learning in the European Union(Committee for Economic Development of Australia, 2005)
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ItemOlder workers and the labour market: Lessons from abroad(American Society on Aging, 2007)This article is based largely on research completed recently for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, which considered recent trends in public policy toward older workers in eleven Member States of the European Union and developments in workplace policy in approximately 120 organizations, primarily larger and operating in the private sector. The article summarizes and evaluates the European public policy response to economic challenges resulting from population aging, before going on to discuss the response of businesses, particularly as they wrestle with increasing competition. The article concludes by asking questions about the future place of older workers in the labor markets of the industrialized nations, and how they will experience efforts to make them work for longer.