1. Looming Threats to the Intimate Bond in Hospice Care? Economic and Organizational Pressures in the Case Study of a Hospice
- Author
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Audrey K. Gordon and Elijah G. Ward
- Subjects
Health (social science) ,Restructuring ,Sexual Behavior ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Organizational culture ,Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine ,Competition (economics) ,03 medical and health sciences ,Interpersonal relationship ,0302 clinical medicine ,Looming ,Nursing ,030502 gerontology ,Humans ,Medicine ,Interpersonal Relations ,Quality (business) ,030212 general & internal medicine ,Life-span and Life-course Studies ,Hospice care ,media_common ,business.industry ,Bond ,Hospices ,Professional-Patient Relations ,Public relations ,Object Attachment ,Organizational Culture ,Affect ,0305 other medical science ,business - Abstract
Hospice organizations are assailed by stiff competition, ever-rising costs, limited funding, and policy changes. Do such pressures stifle the high quality of care these organizations strive to provide? As a case-in-point, we draw from the mid-1990s accounts of caregivers at a nonprofit hospice in a Midwestern city in the United States. We maintain that economic pressures drive organizational restructuring, which then weakens working conditions and, thereby, weakens the staff-client relationship. We discuss effects upon worker behaviors, the worker-client relationship, and client care. This ethnographic case study signals the need to closely examine the threats that current economic and organizational pressures in the United States may pose to the quality of hospice care.
- Published
- 2007
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