Last week Japke-d. Bouma, a Dutch column writer, stated that in order to be happy you don’t always need to go to the top. She got the advice from a wise man saying that the view halfway also brings you happiness (for Dutch readers here is the column). A feel good phrase putting things in the …
Some days doing research gives you the feeling it is going nowhere. Then there are simply not enough hours in a day, not enough energy, concentration, memory or brain capacity to take it all in. Today is such a day. I am trying to structure the rules of planning surgeries. Or rather, I am trying …
Hospital operations: finding the rules of the game Lees verder »
In the series of blogs on who is running the hospital, so far I have talked about nurses , surgeons and anesthesiologists. They all have coordinative tasks. Besides these agents, there are three people in the hospital with perhaps the most important position of all. Let’s call them John, Anne and Nikky. It does not feel …
The hospital coordinator: broker, negiotiator, educator, pedagogue, administrator… Lees verder »
My first journal paper of my PhD research was published last November. It was my first scientific paper ever. Although I have written many reports and papers over the past 20 years, writing a scientific paper was something else. It was a team effort of all authors. It was peer reviewed twice. It took a time: …
My first journal paper now available open access Lees verder »
When I started my case study research in the hospital, somewhere in the back of my mind there was this thought: I have been working in hospitals for over 10 years, so what more will I learn from this? Of course I did not really believe the answer to be ‘little’ – otherwise I would …
One of the fun things about doing observations in a hospital is that you see lots of unexpected things. When observing surgeries or patient consultations in the outpatient department I was introduced to doctors and nurses. After been told what my background was (systems engineer/consultant) some asked whether I was going to investigate how efficient …
Surgeons lead nomadic lives in hospitals. Nomads have no fixed habitation and regularly move to and from the same areas (special thanks to Wikipedia for this non scientific definition, but for this purpose it will do). Surgeons travel between places that are run by nurses, in order to service their patients. Interestingly this type of nomadic life …
This is going to be my first Dutch blog (indeed, bad start!). I was at a conference on science blogging and as most sites I will refer to are in Dutch, this seems like the most obvious thing to do. Via Rosanne Hertzberger had ik van dit symposium vernomen . Met haar en iets van …
I received quite some response on the blog on nurses who run the hospital. It appears that to several people who are a nurse or represent nurses it felt like some kind of recognition or appreciation for what they do. Nevertheless, the fact that nurses ‘run’ the hospital is not necessarily good news. It means …
Happy new year! These fireworks are in fact nine social networks for nine tasks that are performed in order to do surgeries for patients. The entire network in my previous blog is built up from 23 social networks, one for each task. Tasks are for example: making the master schedule for the operating theatre (OT), …
Centralization without hierarchy: a ground for organizational firework? Lees verder »
