Asia-Pacific Journal of Health Management (ACHSM)
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The Health Literacy Environment of a Regional Australian Elective Surgery Access Unit: consumer perspectives from pre-admission to post-discharge
Get PDFBackground: Healthcare services should conscientiously ensure their health literacy environment (HLE) supports wayfinding, and provides comprehensible health information. Despite the increasing focus on the importance of evaluating and enhancing the HLE, consumer perspectives about HLE barriers and enablers have received limited attention in the published literature.
Objective: This study aimed to identify barriers and enablers in the HLE of the Elective Surgery Access Unit (ESAU) at Albury Wodonga Health in regional south-east Australia.
Methods:Three consumers participated in the study. Two of these participants completed a wayfinding interview, verbalizing the barriers and enablers encountered during wayfinding from the nearest carpark to the ESAU. All participants reviewed samples of written materials for ESAU consumers. Two participants, who had been discharged, commented on whether any important information was overlooked, from a post-discharge perspective. The data was categorized into inter-related themes within broader overarching domains.
Results:The helpfulness of the physical environment was one domain, involving three themes: signage, parking, and visual cues. The helpfulness of written information was another domain, involving three themes: comprehensiveness, readability and relevance. A third overlapping domain was: the importance of verbal information-giving. This domain also involved three themes: the importance of a phone number to seek assistance, a clearly identifiable reception area, and in-person communication.
Conclusions: The insights of these three service users can inform health services trying to enhance access for everyone needing healthcare. If more Australian health services reviewed their HLE, the findings could inform organizational improvements towards safer, more efficient, and higher quality healthcare. 
In this Issue
Get PDFIn this issue we start with the editorial and then present a research article from Matus, Wenke and Mickan that has an objective the development a practical toolkit of evidence-informed strategies for building research capacity in Allied Health. The focus on allied health continues with a further research article from McKeever and Brown who ask the question ‘What are the client, organisational and employee – related outcomes of high-quality leadership in the Allied Health Professions?’ The authors undertook a scoping review around these aspects in Allied health
How Do We Develop Positive Health Policy?
Get PDFDuring the recent Australian Federal election held on the 18th May 2019 much was made by all sides of the political divide about health and health services, much was praised, and more was promised in the name of health policy and improved approaches to health care delivery. Given that the ‘quiet Australians’ have made their choice and the political angst and dust has diminished, it might be time to return the debate to determine what it was that we all agreed to and where do we go from here....
A Descriptive Analysis of a Health Management Work Integrated Learning Course: moving from Health Services Management learning to employment readiness
Get PDFHealth Management Work Integrated Learning is a 40 credit point penultimate course of experiential learning in the Master of Advanced Health Services Management M(Adv)HSM now offered by the School of Medicine Health at Griffith University.
WIL was initiated in 2009 within the School of Public Health (Lilley et al (2009) based on a Teaching and Learning Grant to meet an existing experiential learning need identified for students studying in the enabling professional area of health management. After 15 semesters of delivery of these courses (completed at December 2016), it is timely to report on the quantitative attributes on the course to inform the post-graduate literature on this type of education. An objective of this review is to influence both curricula and student decision making regarding the future conduct and enhancement of tertiary preparation for health services management HSM employment. WIL has experienced a large increase in student enrolments in recent years suggesting that there is both strong demand for this nature of learning and student satisfaction with the quality of the learning modality in preparing for a career in HSM
Thermal Equations for Predicting Foot Skin Temperatur
Get PDFPurpose: Studying the foot skin temperature of both the young and elderly is important for preventing foot diseases and improving thermal comfort and variability during gait. However, few studies have predicted the thermal conditions in footwear under different variables. The aim of this study is to therefore formulate thermal equations for both the young and elderly to predict their foot skin temperature under the variables of age, gender, activity level and various properties of different types of footwear.
Methodology: A total of 80 participants between 20 and 85 years old are recruited in this study, including 40 younger subjects (mean: 23.0; SD: 4.05) and 40 elderly subjects (mean: 69.8; SD: 4.59). They are tasked to sit, walk and run in a conditioning chamber.
Findings: Regression equations for predicting the foot skin temperature of the young and elderly people are formulated, with R squares of 0.513 and 0.350 respectively. The level of activity is the most important factor when predicting the foot skin temperature. The material properties of the footwear also show a significant impact on the foot skin temperature of the elderly.
Value: The findings of this study provide the basis for better thermal comfort and help to facilitate the footwear design process
In this Issue
Get PDFIn this issue continues to explore the theme of health reform by traversing some recent experiences of the Editor in rural health contexts that traverse big data, technology, the social capital of health professionals all currently operating in drought and fire ravaged circumstances. After we pass the current circumstances there will be a need to rebuild rural communities and sustainable health services and workforce should be part of the community building.....
A Study on Management of Health Care Infrastructure Development in Rural India: Critical analysis of current status and future challenges
Get PDFThe study has focused on the role of rural health infrastructure development in India. Currently the health infrastructure development of India is poor and it needs fundamental reforms to deal with new emerging challenges. The role of private providers is increasing but simultaneously healthcare facilities are becoming costly. The study surveys the present position of rural health care infrastructure growth, the development of infrastructure, health care facilities, position of human resource, and quality of service delivery.
The paper suggests future challenges of Indian healthcare infrastructure development in rural area, as the burden of disease, financial deficiency in a large section of the population, vaccination policy and poor access to health care. Longevity, literacy and per capita income are further considerations
The Ingredients for Innovation: impacts for practice and the education of health service managers
Get PDFBackground: Innovation is associated with improvement, however, there is little published about the “ingredients” for successful innovation in healthcare, and the skills required of Health Service Managers (HSMs) who facilitate change in their organisations. Aim: This paper synthesizes the findings of a literature review performed to describe the organizational and contextual factors that enable and sustain innovation in healthcare settings. Implications for the practice of Health Service Management and curriculum development have been extrapolated as innovation has been identified as a solution to escalating health system demands in a rapidly changing environment.Approach: A literature review used a systematic approach to source articles from the Scopus and Emerald databases over the period of 1993 to February 2016. Papers were also retrieved from a BMC Health Services Research weekly alert. Snowballing from relevant articles identified additional and significant papers. Grey literature, peer-reviewed papers and reports were similarly reviewed to incorporate contemporary perspectives on this topic across the business, health and University sectors, and to facilitate discussion of the skills and competencies for HSMs practice and education in relation to this topic. Context: Innovation is crucial to the sustainability and viability of Australia’s world class health system. There is potential for innovation to lead to more cost-effective and efficient ways to address the challenges of limited health budgets and increasingly complex morbidities in an ageing population. Main findings: Successful innovation according to the literature, is determined by a complex interaction of determinants including organizational culture, support and resourcing for innovation, leadership and a clear and shared vision. An organizational culture supportive of innovation includes strong transdisciplinary communication, engaged and invested staff and recognition of the role of innovation in health improvement and outcomes. A setting that is open to identifying, testing and evaluating initiatives for innovation requires capabilities to establish and maintain the working relationships, team dynamics and to prioritise resourcing to facilitate and sustain new ways of working, services, products or technologies.Recent research on the skills required for health service management employability and career success was also examined and identified the importance of skills such as communication, creativity and problem solving. These skills are critical and linked to the role of the HSM in accelerating innovation in their organisations.Conclusions: The key ingredients for successful innovation in health were inferred from the literature. HSMs are well positioned to support innovation as they possess the necessary technical and professional skillsets. The literature suggests that the development of graduate skills in the areas of communication, problem solving, and team work is critical to meet industry needs and for HSMs to enable innovation.Universities educating health service managers strive to ensure that graduates are professionals equipped to lead and manage health services. HSM graduates can foster the organizational and contextual factors that sustain and sanction innovative ideas to flourish and progress to implementation. Current research advocates that strong industry and higher education collaboration is important to further develop the graduate attributes necessary for innovation.