Sense of community and job satisfaction among social and health care managers.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify how the factors associated with sense of community at work are connected with job satisfaction among the front-line managers and middle managers in social and health-care services in Finland.

Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire prepared for this study was sent to 241 social and health-care managers (front line and middle managers) in Finland. A total of 136 of managers responded to the survey (response rate was 56 per cent).

Threat of mass resignation as a window of opportunity for questioning hospital service production structures in Finland.

Background: Service production structures of public health care, once established, have proved extremely difficult to change. For this study, we reviewed discussions that took place in management teams at a Finnish central hospital over a period of nine months. The aim of the research was to analyze whether the management team meetings brought forth new and radical alternatives as to how service production could be reorganized.

Overlaps and accumulation in the use of rehabilitation services.

The Finnish rehabilitation system is considered fragmented and multisectoral, and thus it may produce 'multiclients' receiving inefficient and overlapping services. This paper addresses the overlaps and accumulation in the delivery of rehabilitation services in Finnish rehabilitation subsystems. Data were drawn from several administrative registers on the use of rehabilitation services during the years 2004 and 2005 in one hospital district area in Midwest Finland.

Use and distribution of rehabilitation services: a register linkage study in one hospital district area in Finland.

This study focuses on a large set of rehabilitation services used between 2004 and 2005 in one hospital district area in Finland. The rehabilitation system consists of several subsystems. This complex system is suggested to produce arbitrary rehabilitation services.

Coordination of a complex welfare system case: rehabilitation entity in Finland.

The main purpose of this article is to analyse the institutional and political structures of the Finnish rehabilitation entity and the governmental efforts to improve the governance of the rehabilitation policy. Rehabilitation in Finland is a complex welfare system which has undergone several coordination attempts during the last two decades. The centrality of the coordination of this welfare system is obvious.

Knowledge sources affecting decision-making among social and health care managers.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how managers in social and health care evaluate the knowledge sources affecting their decision-making, and how the evaluations were associated with the managers' professional background, activity sector, gender, age and management experience.

Design/methodology/approach: The study data are gathered from a questionnaire survey to the middle-line doctor, nurse and social managers (n = 404) within the responsibility area of a Finnish university hospital. Assessed the proportions of individual knowledge sources in the complete data set and their associations with the subjects' background data.

First-line nurse managers in university hospitals--captives to their own professional culture?

Aim: This study investigates whether first-line nurse managers in hospitals share common dispositions related to managerial work and leadership, what they are like, and what their relationship is with the various expectations set on them.

Methods: The first data were collected by focus group interviews in the autumn of 2000 and analysed using qualitative content analysis and frame analysis. The second data set were part of a questionnaire survey addressed to the same managers in 2001 with a focus on their diverse leadership roles.

Personnel management in Finnish social and health care.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine components of good personnel management and how they come true in accounts of social and health care managers.

Design/methodology/approach: The data were obtained by means of a postal survey sent to middle-line managers in positions above the first-line management level in the responsibility area of Tampere University Hospital. The questionnaire was sent to 703 managers; 433 sent in responses indicating a response rate of 62 percent.

Doctor-managers as decision makers in hospitals and health centres.

Purpose: This paper describes factors influencing doctor-managers' decision making in specialised health care, health centres and at different levels of management.

Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected as part of a survey on physicians graduating in 1977-1991 as drawn from the register of the Finnish Medical Association. The study sample was formed by selecting all physicians born on odd days (n=4144) from the baseline group (n=8232).

Client feedback on physiotherapy counselling in primary health care.

The extent of rehabilitation services is adequate, but little feedback is available on these services and service users. This paper is based on a client feedback survey of physiotherapy services conducted in Spring 2000. The purpose of the paper is to compare patients' perceptions of the physiotherapy instruction they received in a private outpatient facility and in a public physiotherapy facility.