Hands-on medical administration | |
Achieving effective health care integration: the essential guide. Claire Jackson and Inge de Jong. Brisbane: Mater University of Queensland Centre for General Practice, 2000 (132 pp). ISBN 0 646 39791 5. |
The integration of primary medical care services with institutional care delivery has been the subject of a variety of initiatives, which have achieved variable success. A considerable amount has been learned about integration through the experiences of groups such as the Support and Evaluation Resources Unit (SERU) at the University of Melbourne and the Centre for General Practice at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane. A significant focus on continuing medical education has developed in both these centres. The practical experience gained from this "hands-on integration" has been recorded in this book so that those who are interested can apply the lessons elsewhere.
The authors have achieved a reader-friendly, almost conversational style that is greatly enhanced in the chapters on culture and managing cultural change by relating their experiences to the literature. These are the strongest chapters in a book that is likely to appeal to those engaged in planning or implementing integration activities rather than individual practitioners. The numerous examples make the experiences accessible to practitioners as well as planners, and the development of hypothetical scenarios based on the authors' experiences will assist in anticipating some of the more predictable problems that may occur. This slim, easily digestible volume includes a series of tools that may be useful as templates in other institutional settings. References to other published tools are scattered throughout the chapters. The book is one of the first locally published monographs on this topic. Future editions would benefit from closer editing, especially modification of the chapter on communication and access, to have less admonition and more of the examples seen the subsequent chapters. Peter Harris
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