Open AccessMedicine, management, and modernisation: a "danse macabre"?
Author(s) -
Pieter Degeling,
S Maxwell,
John Kennedy,
Barbara Coyle
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
bmj. british medical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.831
H-Index - 429
ISSN - 0959-8138
DOI - 10.1136/bmj.326.7390.649
Subject(s) - modernization theory , macabre , service (business) , nursing , political science , medicine , public relations , business , art , law , art history , marketing
To break their destructive antagonism over issues of health service modernisation, doctors and managers should engage more directly with nursing and allied health professionals when responding to reform initiatives\ud\udEdwards and Marshall have recently called for constructive dialogue to replace the mutual suspicion between doctors and managers.1 They suggest that the recent tensions over the negotiation of the new UK consultant contract should be seen as part of a “deeper problem [with] a long history.” They propose that doctors' and managers' very different approaches to issues such as accountability, use of guidelines, and finance are the result of each discipline's training, beliefs, and experiences. Finally, they suggest that, left unresolved, these differences have the potential to threaten individual institutions and perhaps even the future of the NHS