Managing Complexity in Healthcare

Managing Complexity in Healthcare introduces the ComEntEth (Complex Entropic Ethical) model as an integrated bio-medical and philosophical approach to understanding how people get things done in healthcare. Drawing on the complexity sciences, studies of entropy in living organisms and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, healthcare is theorised as energetic relational exchanges between people as entropic and ethical entities that unfold around a central attractor: Reduction in elevated entropy or suffering in patients.
Living entities are engaged in a continuous struggle against the tendency to produce entropy. From the cellular to the collective of human endeavours, the tendency of complex systems is to disorder and decay. Yet in the micro-activity of healthcare enterprise, people resist this tendency by expending energy to create order and sustain life. Making sense of how this miraculous work is made possible is the foundation of this book.
Through practical examples - from analysis of practitioner burnout, rural and remote healthcare, the functioning of emergency departments, to government, social and institutional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic - this new integral philosophy provides practitioners, managers, policy designers, and scholars an effective way to understand the dynamics of daily processes and practices that link the micro of everyday interactions with the macro-trends of healthcare.

List of contents

CHAPTER ONE: HEALTHCARE AS COMPLEX, ENTROPIC AND ETHICAL   CHAPTER TWO: REDUCING ENTROPY IN PATIENTS AS THE ESSENCE OF HEALTHCARE   CHAPTER THREE: IMPROVING ENTROPIC FLOW IN HEALTHCARE ORGANISATIONS   CHAPTER FOUR: ENTROPY AND HEALTHCARE IN A PANDEMIC   CHAPTER FIVE: AFTERWORD: COMPLEXITY, ENTROPY AND ETHICS IN HEALTHCARE

About the author

Dr. Lesley Kuhn is a retired academic, Western Sydney University, Australia.
Dr. Kieran Le Plastrier is a family physician and Director of Medical Services at Blackall Hospital, Australia.

Summary

Managing Complexity in Healthcare introduces the ComEntEth (Complex Entropic Ethical) model and draws on healthcare theorised as energetic relational exchanges between people as entropic and ethical entities that unfold around a central attractor: Reduction in elevated entropy or suffering in patients.

Product details

• Authors: Lesley Kuhn, Lesley Le Plastrier Kuhn, Kuhn Lesley, Kieran Le Plastrier
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.01.2024
• EAN: 9781032054155
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3205415-5
• No. of pages: 124
• Series: Routledge Focus on Business and Management
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Applied psychology; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Management; MEDICAL / Ethics, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Organizational Behavior, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / General, MEDICAL / Health Care Delivery, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Management, Organizational theory & behaviour, Management & management techniques, Industry & industrial studies, Organizational theory and behaviour, Management and management techniques, Health systems & services, Medical ethics and professional conduct, Medical ethics & professional conduct, Health systems and services, Industry and industrial studies, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Healthcare