Davina Allen
Biographic Data
| ID | 94273 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Davina Allen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Davina |
| FAMILY NAME | Allen |
| SIGNATURE | ALLEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cardiff University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6729-7502 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 411 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Why is hospital discharge so difficult? Reconsidering patient trajectories in theory and practice: Insights from an ethnographic study of transitions in hip fracture care
This paper combines translational mobilisation theory and assemblage thinking to elaborate the patient trajectory concept. Deploying ethnographic research on transitions in hip fracture care in Wales (2014-2016), it describes and explains the structures and logics that condition transition interfaces, how transition infrastructures enact patients and with what effects. Comparative analysis of transition in three distinctive assemblages offers new…
The qualities of data: How nurses and their managers act on patient feedback in an English hospital
Purpose To investigate ethnographically how patient experience data, as a named category in healthcare organisations, is actively “made” through the co-creative interactions of data, people and meanings in English hospitals. Design/methodology/approach The authors draw on fieldnotes, interview recordings and transcripts produced from 13 months (2016–2017) of ethnographic research on patient experience data work at five acute English National Heal…
Patient experience data as enacted: Sociomaterial perspectives and 'singular-multiples' in health care quality improvement research
Over the last three decades, sociomaterial approaches to the study of health care practices have made an important contribution to the sociology of health care. Significant attention has been paid to the role of technology and artefacts in health care and the operation of actor-networks but less space has been given to questions of ontological multiplicity in health care practices. In this paper, we draw upon our study of patient experience data …
Organizing Practice and Practicing Organization: An Outline of Translational Mobilization Theory
Understanding the relationship between emergent social phenomena and the stabilizing mechanisms that make collective action possible is a long-standing concern in social science, but remains an inadequately theorized area. This article sets out a middle range theory-translational mobilization theory-to address this challenge. Adopting a practice-based approach, we connect interactionist perspectives on social order, analyses of sociotechnical net…
Healthcare quality and safety: A review of policy, practice and research
Over the last two decades healthcare quality and safety have risen to the fore of health policy and research. This has largely been informed by theoretical and empirical ideas found in the fields of ergonomics and human factors. These have enabled significant advances in our understanding and management of quality and safety. However, a parallel and at time neglected sociological literature on clinical quality and safety is presented as offering …
Towards a sociology of healthcare safety and quality
The contributions to this collection address technologies, practices, experiences and the organisation of quality and safety across a wide range of healthcare contexts. Spanning three continents, from hospital to community, maternity to mental health, they shine a light into the boardrooms, back offices and front-lines of healthcare, offering sociological insights from the perspectives of managers, clinicians and patients. We review these article…
Inside 'bed management: Ethnographic insights from the vantage point of UK hospital nurses
In the face of unprecedented financial and demographic challenges, optimising acute bed utilisation by the proactive management of patient flows is a pressing policy concern in high-income countries. Despite the growing literature on this topic, bed management has received scant sociological attention. Drawing on practice-based approaches, this article deploys ethnographic data to examine bed management from the perspective of UK hospital nurses.…
Re-conceptualising holism in the contemporary nursing mandate: From individual to organisational relationships
Lost in translation? 'Evidence' and the articulation of institutional logics in integrated care pathways: From Positive to Negative Boundary Object
This article examines the translation of a clinical governance concept - integrated care pathways (ICPs) - into an infrastructural technology. Building on previous work, the application of boundary object theory is extended in this article to argue that stakeholder enrolment in pathway methodology may be less thoroughgoing than originally assumed. Pathways have effectively aligned management and nursing interests around a quality agenda and nurse…
Understanding context for quality improvement: Artefacts, affordances and socio-material infrastructure
Against a backdrop of growing concern for patient safety and service quality, modern health-care systems are witnessing a proliferation of improvement initiatives. The impact is often variable, however, and a key theme to emerge from evaluations of these efforts is a recognition of the effects of local context on the success or otherwise of an intervention. However, the 'context' tends to be understood in terms of higher order issues such as stru…
Nd Sociology Of Health & Illness Monograph Call For Abstracts: The Sociology of Healthcare Safety and Quality
Improving the quality and safety of healthcare is a global priority. The 22nd Sociology of Health & Illness Monograph will bring together empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions to progress a distinctive sociological understanding of this rapidly developing field. The intention is to showcase papers that apply sociological conceptualisations and critiques to quality and safety across diverse international contexts, expand orthodox…
Just a Typical Teenager: The Social Ecology of 'Normal Adolescence'-Insights from Diabetes Care
In Western society 'normal adolescence' is understood to be a biologically driven phase characterized by emotional turmoil and irrational behavior. Despite being discredited within academic literature this discourse persists both in formal theory and everyday use. Drawing on the case of diabetes care, I argue that the discourse of 'normal adolescence' derives its power from its value as a vocabulary of motive through which to navigate the contrad…
Complex Caring Trajectories in Community Mental Health: Contingencies, Divisions of Labor and Care Coordination
From boundary concept to boundary object: The practice and politics of care pathway development
A critical examination of home care: End of life care as an illustrative case
Complexity and Change in the United Kingdom's System of Mental Health Care
Knowledge to Action: Evidence-Based Health Care in Context - Dopson, S. and Fitzgerald, L
Dopson, S. and Fitzgerald, L. Knowledge to Action: Evidence-Based Health Care in Context . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2005 £45:00 (nbk) xiii, pp223 ISBN 0 19 9259011 This edited book addresses the question of why it is so notoriously difficult to implement evidence in health care contexts. It is based on seven applied policy studies in this field and is an interesting example of evidence synthesis. The authors’ aim is to use the cumulativ…
Making connections: Healthcare as a Case Study in the Social Organisation of Work
The division of labour has been a central preoccupation since the earliest days of sociology, and considered key to an understanding of wider societal structures. Both Durkheim and Marx shared Saint-Simon's basic assumption that the most fundamental aspect of human existence was the absolute necessity to produce the means of subsistence (Lee and Newby 1983). They recognised that the starting point for understanding a given society was the way in …
Understanding complex trajectories in health and social care provision
Ensuring collaboration between health and social care providers is a well-established policy concern in most developed countries. Thus far, however, this has proved to be a frustratingly elusive goal. Despite the growing body of empirical work devoted to this issue, social scientific theorising on the management of complex caring trajectories remains under-developed. This paper is an attempt to begin to address this gap in the literature. Drawing…
Accommodating health and social care needs: Routine Resource Allocation in Stroke Rehabilitation
This paper explores routine resource allocation processes in health and social care. While there has been a small body of work which has drawn on Lipsky's (1980) insights into street level bureaucracy, few have taken seriously the opportunity offered by ethnography to explore in detail the work of front-line staff as a way of observing policy processes in action. Utilising ethnographic data from research into the continuing care of adults who had…
Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work
Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atro…
Doing Occupational Demarcation: The “Boundary-Work” of Nurse Managers in a District General Hospital
This article examines how nurse managers attempted to accomplish the formal boundaries of clinical nursing in a large UK district general hospital. The study was undertaken in the context of wider national policy developments which had provided the impetus for role realignment. The practices and rhetorical devices nurse managers employed in doing demarcation are treated herein as examples of "boundary-work." The management context is an arena whi…
Negotiating the role of expert carers on an adult hospital ward
Contemporary systems of welfare are increasingly underpinned by the assumption that families should care for their dependent adult relatives. Yet, the burgeoning empirical literature in this area has given little attention to the ways in which family caregivers fit into the service system. Drawing on interactionist theories of the division of labour, this paper employs ethnographic data, taken from a recent study, to explore the ways in which for…
Measuring outpatient resource use and case mix in ophthalmology in north east England
OBJECTIVES: To test the extent to which two existing ambulatory case mix measures (Ambulatory Visit Groups and Ambulatory Patient Groups) and other variables can explain resource use variations in ophthalmic outpatient visits. DESIGN: Three week prospective study of three consultant outpatient clinics. SETTING: One ophthalmic hospital (Sunderland Eye Infirmary, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear) and three outreach clinics (South Tyneside District Hospita…
The Nursing-Medical Boundary: A Negotiated Order
In a recent paper in Sociology of Health and Illness , Svensson (1996) makes the case for adopting the negotiated order perspective as the most appropriate theoretical framework for understanding patterns of doctor‐nurse interaction. Analysing interview data with nursing staff from surgical and medical wards in five Swedish hospitals, Svensson identifies key changes in the health care context which he suggests have created ‘negotiation space’ for…
The Nursing-Medical Boundary: A Negotiated Order
In a recent paper in Sociology of Health and Illness , Svensson (1996) makes the case for adopting the negotiated order perspective as the most appropriate theoretical framework for understanding patterns of doctor‐nurse interaction. Analysing interview data with nursing staff from surgical and medical wards in five Swedish hospitals, Svensson identifies key changes in the health care context which he suggests have created ‘negotiation space’ for…
From boundary concept to boundary object: The practice and politics of care pathway development
Doing Occupational Demarcation: The “Boundary-Work” of Nurse Managers in a District General Hospital
This article examines how nurse managers attempted to accomplish the formal boundaries of clinical nursing in a large UK district general hospital. The study was undertaken in the context of wider national policy developments which had provided the impetus for role realignment. The practices and rhetorical devices nurse managers employed in doing demarcation are treated herein as examples of "boundary-work." The management context is an arena whi…
Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work
Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atro…
Understanding complex trajectories in health and social care provision
Ensuring collaboration between health and social care providers is a well-established policy concern in most developed countries. Thus far, however, this has proved to be a frustratingly elusive goal. Despite the growing body of empirical work devoted to this issue, social scientific theorising on the management of complex caring trajectories remains under-developed. This paper is an attempt to begin to address this gap in the literature. Drawing…
A critical examination of home care: End of life care as an illustrative case
Lost in translation? 'Evidence' and the articulation of institutional logics in integrated care pathways: From Positive to Negative Boundary Object
This article examines the translation of a clinical governance concept - integrated care pathways (ICPs) - into an infrastructural technology. Building on previous work, the application of boundary object theory is extended in this article to argue that stakeholder enrolment in pathway methodology may be less thoroughgoing than originally assumed. Pathways have effectively aligned management and nursing interests around a quality agenda and nurse…
Negotiating the role of expert carers on an adult hospital ward
Contemporary systems of welfare are increasingly underpinned by the assumption that families should care for their dependent adult relatives. Yet, the burgeoning empirical literature in this area has given little attention to the ways in which family caregivers fit into the service system. Drawing on interactionist theories of the division of labour, this paper employs ethnographic data, taken from a recent study, to explore the ways in which for…
Re-conceptualising holism in the contemporary nursing mandate: From individual to organisational relationships
Making connections: Healthcare as a Case Study in the Social Organisation of Work
The division of labour has been a central preoccupation since the earliest days of sociology, and considered key to an understanding of wider societal structures. Both Durkheim and Marx shared Saint-Simon's basic assumption that the most fundamental aspect of human existence was the absolute necessity to produce the means of subsistence (Lee and Newby 1983). They recognised that the starting point for understanding a given society was the way in …
Towards a sociology of healthcare safety and quality
The contributions to this collection address technologies, practices, experiences and the organisation of quality and safety across a wide range of healthcare contexts. Spanning three continents, from hospital to community, maternity to mental health, they shine a light into the boardrooms, back offices and front-lines of healthcare, offering sociological insights from the perspectives of managers, clinicians and patients. We review these article…
Inside 'bed management: Ethnographic insights from the vantage point of UK hospital nurses
In the face of unprecedented financial and demographic challenges, optimising acute bed utilisation by the proactive management of patient flows is a pressing policy concern in high-income countries. Despite the growing literature on this topic, bed management has received scant sociological attention. Drawing on practice-based approaches, this article deploys ethnographic data to examine bed management from the perspective of UK hospital nurses.…
Complex Caring Trajectories in Community Mental Health: Contingencies, Divisions of Labor and Care Coordination
Accommodating health and social care needs: Routine Resource Allocation in Stroke Rehabilitation
This paper explores routine resource allocation processes in health and social care. While there has been a small body of work which has drawn on Lipsky's (1980) insights into street level bureaucracy, few have taken seriously the opportunity offered by ethnography to explore in detail the work of front-line staff as a way of observing policy processes in action. Utilising ethnographic data from research into the continuing care of adults who had…
Understanding context for quality improvement: Artefacts, affordances and socio-material infrastructure
Against a backdrop of growing concern for patient safety and service quality, modern health-care systems are witnessing a proliferation of improvement initiatives. The impact is often variable, however, and a key theme to emerge from evaluations of these efforts is a recognition of the effects of local context on the success or otherwise of an intervention. However, the 'context' tends to be understood in terms of higher order issues such as stru…
Complexity and Change in the United Kingdom's System of Mental Health Care
Organizing Practice and Practicing Organization: An Outline of Translational Mobilization Theory
Understanding the relationship between emergent social phenomena and the stabilizing mechanisms that make collective action possible is a long-standing concern in social science, but remains an inadequately theorized area. This article sets out a middle range theory-translational mobilization theory-to address this challenge. Adopting a practice-based approach, we connect interactionist perspectives on social order, analyses of sociotechnical net…
Just a Typical Teenager: The Social Ecology of 'Normal Adolescence'-Insights from Diabetes Care
In Western society 'normal adolescence' is understood to be a biologically driven phase characterized by emotional turmoil and irrational behavior. Despite being discredited within academic literature this discourse persists both in formal theory and everyday use. Drawing on the case of diabetes care, I argue that the discourse of 'normal adolescence' derives its power from its value as a vocabulary of motive through which to navigate the contrad…
Patient experience data as enacted: Sociomaterial perspectives and 'singular-multiples' in health care quality improvement research
Over the last three decades, sociomaterial approaches to the study of health care practices have made an important contribution to the sociology of health care. Significant attention has been paid to the role of technology and artefacts in health care and the operation of actor-networks but less space has been given to questions of ontological multiplicity in health care practices. In this paper, we draw upon our study of patient experience data …
The Nursing-Medical Boundary: A Negotiated Order
In a recent paper in Sociology of Health and Illness , Svensson (1996) makes the case for adopting the negotiated order perspective as the most appropriate theoretical framework for understanding patterns of doctor‐nurse interaction. Analysing interview data with nursing staff from surgical and medical wards in five Swedish hospitals, Svensson identifies key changes in the health care context which he suggests have created ‘negotiation space’ for…
Measuring outpatient resource use and case mix in ophthalmology in north east England
OBJECTIVES: To test the extent to which two existing ambulatory case mix measures (Ambulatory Visit Groups and Ambulatory Patient Groups) and other variables can explain resource use variations in ophthalmic outpatient visits. DESIGN: Three week prospective study of three consultant outpatient clinics. SETTING: One ophthalmic hospital (Sunderland Eye Infirmary, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear) and three outreach clinics (South Tyneside District Hospita…
Doing Occupational Demarcation: The “Boundary-Work” of Nurse Managers in a District General Hospital
This article examines how nurse managers attempted to accomplish the formal boundaries of clinical nursing in a large UK district general hospital. The study was undertaken in the context of wider national policy developments which had provided the impetus for role realignment. The practices and rhetorical devices nurse managers employed in doing demarcation are treated herein as examples of "boundary-work." The management context is an arena whi…
Negotiating the role of expert carers on an adult hospital ward
Contemporary systems of welfare are increasingly underpinned by the assumption that families should care for their dependent adult relatives. Yet, the burgeoning empirical literature in this area has given little attention to the ways in which family caregivers fit into the service system. Drawing on interactionist theories of the division of labour, this paper employs ethnographic data, taken from a recent study, to explore the ways in which for…
Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work
Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atro…
Understanding complex trajectories in health and social care provision
Ensuring collaboration between health and social care providers is a well-established policy concern in most developed countries. Thus far, however, this has proved to be a frustratingly elusive goal. Despite the growing body of empirical work devoted to this issue, social scientific theorising on the management of complex caring trajectories remains under-developed. This paper is an attempt to begin to address this gap in the literature. Drawing…
Accommodating health and social care needs: Routine Resource Allocation in Stroke Rehabilitation
This paper explores routine resource allocation processes in health and social care. While there has been a small body of work which has drawn on Lipsky's (1980) insights into street level bureaucracy, few have taken seriously the opportunity offered by ethnography to explore in detail the work of front-line staff as a way of observing policy processes in action. Utilising ethnographic data from research into the continuing care of adults who had…
Making connections: Healthcare as a Case Study in the Social Organisation of Work
The division of labour has been a central preoccupation since the earliest days of sociology, and considered key to an understanding of wider societal structures. Both Durkheim and Marx shared Saint-Simon's basic assumption that the most fundamental aspect of human existence was the absolute necessity to produce the means of subsistence (Lee and Newby 1983). They recognised that the starting point for understanding a given society was the way in …
Complexity and Change in the United Kingdom's System of Mental Health Care
Knowledge to Action: Evidence-Based Health Care in Context - Dopson, S. and Fitzgerald, L
Dopson, S. and Fitzgerald, L. Knowledge to Action: Evidence-Based Health Care in Context . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2005 £45:00 (nbk) xiii, pp223 ISBN 0 19 9259011 This edited book addresses the question of why it is so notoriously difficult to implement evidence in health care contexts. It is based on seven applied policy studies in this field and is an interesting example of evidence synthesis. The authors’ aim is to use the cumulativ…
A critical examination of home care: End of life care as an illustrative case
From boundary concept to boundary object: The practice and politics of care pathway development
Complex Caring Trajectories in Community Mental Health: Contingencies, Divisions of Labor and Care Coordination
Understanding context for quality improvement: Artefacts, affordances and socio-material infrastructure
Against a backdrop of growing concern for patient safety and service quality, modern health-care systems are witnessing a proliferation of improvement initiatives. The impact is often variable, however, and a key theme to emerge from evaluations of these efforts is a recognition of the effects of local context on the success or otherwise of an intervention. However, the 'context' tends to be understood in terms of higher order issues such as stru…
Nd Sociology Of Health & Illness Monograph Call For Abstracts: The Sociology of Healthcare Safety and Quality
Improving the quality and safety of healthcare is a global priority. The 22nd Sociology of Health & Illness Monograph will bring together empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions to progress a distinctive sociological understanding of this rapidly developing field. The intention is to showcase papers that apply sociological conceptualisations and critiques to quality and safety across diverse international contexts, expand orthodox…
Just a Typical Teenager: The Social Ecology of 'Normal Adolescence'-Insights from Diabetes Care
In Western society 'normal adolescence' is understood to be a biologically driven phase characterized by emotional turmoil and irrational behavior. Despite being discredited within academic literature this discourse persists both in formal theory and everyday use. Drawing on the case of diabetes care, I argue that the discourse of 'normal adolescence' derives its power from its value as a vocabulary of motive through which to navigate the contrad…
Re-conceptualising holism in the contemporary nursing mandate: From individual to organisational relationships
Lost in translation? 'Evidence' and the articulation of institutional logics in integrated care pathways: From Positive to Negative Boundary Object
This article examines the translation of a clinical governance concept - integrated care pathways (ICPs) - into an infrastructural technology. Building on previous work, the application of boundary object theory is extended in this article to argue that stakeholder enrolment in pathway methodology may be less thoroughgoing than originally assumed. Pathways have effectively aligned management and nursing interests around a quality agenda and nurse…
Inside 'bed management: Ethnographic insights from the vantage point of UK hospital nurses
In the face of unprecedented financial and demographic challenges, optimising acute bed utilisation by the proactive management of patient flows is a pressing policy concern in high-income countries. Despite the growing literature on this topic, bed management has received scant sociological attention. Drawing on practice-based approaches, this article deploys ethnographic data to examine bed management from the perspective of UK hospital nurses.…
Healthcare quality and safety: A review of policy, practice and research
Over the last two decades healthcare quality and safety have risen to the fore of health policy and research. This has largely been informed by theoretical and empirical ideas found in the fields of ergonomics and human factors. These have enabled significant advances in our understanding and management of quality and safety. However, a parallel and at time neglected sociological literature on clinical quality and safety is presented as offering …
Towards a sociology of healthcare safety and quality
The contributions to this collection address technologies, practices, experiences and the organisation of quality and safety across a wide range of healthcare contexts. Spanning three continents, from hospital to community, maternity to mental health, they shine a light into the boardrooms, back offices and front-lines of healthcare, offering sociological insights from the perspectives of managers, clinicians and patients. We review these article…
Organizing Practice and Practicing Organization: An Outline of Translational Mobilization Theory
Understanding the relationship between emergent social phenomena and the stabilizing mechanisms that make collective action possible is a long-standing concern in social science, but remains an inadequately theorized area. This article sets out a middle range theory-translational mobilization theory-to address this challenge. Adopting a practice-based approach, we connect interactionist perspectives on social order, analyses of sociotechnical net…
Patient experience data as enacted: Sociomaterial perspectives and 'singular-multiples' in health care quality improvement research
Over the last three decades, sociomaterial approaches to the study of health care practices have made an important contribution to the sociology of health care. Significant attention has been paid to the role of technology and artefacts in health care and the operation of actor-networks but less space has been given to questions of ontological multiplicity in health care practices. In this paper, we draw upon our study of patient experience data …
The qualities of data: How nurses and their managers act on patient feedback in an English hospital
Purpose To investigate ethnographically how patient experience data, as a named category in healthcare organisations, is actively “made” through the co-creative interactions of data, people and meanings in English hospitals. Design/methodology/approach The authors draw on fieldnotes, interview recordings and transcripts produced from 13 months (2016–2017) of ethnographic research on patient experience data work at five acute English National Heal…
Why is hospital discharge so difficult? Reconsidering patient trajectories in theory and practice: Insights from an ethnographic study of transitions in hip fracture care
This paper combines translational mobilisation theory and assemblage thinking to elaborate the patient trajectory concept. Deploying ethnographic research on transitions in hip fracture care in Wales (2014-2016), it describes and explains the structures and logics that condition transition interfaces, how transition infrastructures enact patients and with what effects. Comparative analysis of transition in three distinctive assemblages offers new…
Sociology (23 works) · Political science (20 works) · Health care (17 works) · Public relations (17 works) · Medicine (16 works) · Nursing (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Psychology (11 works)