Bridging the gap between student and administrator perceptions of mindfulness in a university setting: An exploratory qualitative study.

Objective: This study explores the perceptions of mindfulness among students and administrators in a university setting. Participants: In Study 1, six focus groups were conducted with 34 students. In Study 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six administrators involved with implementing mindfulness-based activities. Methods: Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data in Study 1. Study 2's data were examined according to the 4 major themes found in Study 1. Results: Students acknowledged the difficulty in defining the concept of mindfulness, yet its overall value for improving mental wellbeing was largely affirmed. Administrators perceived mindfulness as beneficial for students, but they expressed concern over low attendance at university-sponsored programs. Conclusions: For universities to harness the benefits of mindfulness, it is recommended that administrators mitigate barriers by having clearer guidance, preparing for emotional challenges, and integrating the practice into teaching, learning, and everyday activities.

Healthcare Management and the Humanities: An Invitation to Dialogue.

Throughout the fields of medicine and organization studies, there are growing indications of the value of the humanities for enriching scholarship, education, and practice. However, the field of healthcare management has yet to consider the promise of the humanities for illuminating its particular domain. This perspective paper explores how the humanities might begin to play a role in healthcare management by focusing on three broad areas: (1) understanding the lived experiences of management, (2) offsetting the "tyranny of metrics", and (3) confronting rather than avoiding anxiety. While preliminary in presentation, these areas are intended to facilitate wider consideration of the humanities in healthcare management and to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue. The paper also identifies actionable approaches that might be derived from such a dialogue, including substantiating critical healthcare management scholarship, collaborating with humanities educators to design novel curricula, proposing alternatives to unduly circumscribed performance targets and competency assessments, creating case studies of formative experiences of practicing healthcare managers, and advancing guidelines for better managing anxiety and its concomitant stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue in healthcare organizations. The paper concludes by discussing the potential risks of incorporating the humanities into healthcare management, while also offering a prospective synthesis from an interdisciplinary approach.

Psychoanalysis: neglected ally in an emerging "critical healthcare management studies" (CHMS)?

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalysis to an emerging sub-field known as "critical healthcare management studies" (CHMS). DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Building upon a wave of critical scholarship in the broader field of management, scholars and practitioners of healthcare management have begun to forge a critical scholarly movement of their own. CHMS, short for "critical healthcare management studies," formally denotes a new subfield of inquiry dedicated to challenging entrenched assumptions, exposing power relations, and cultivating critical praxis, all the while serving as a vital counterpoint to mainstream scholarship. This paper seeks to augment the CHMS movement with psychoanalysis, and particularly the critical vein of organizational psychoanalysis already well-established in critical management studies. FINDINGS: The argument is made that a greater engagement with psychoanalysis offers novel avenues for critical theorizing and practice in healthcare management. Specifically three areas are considered: 1) the exploitative role of guilt in the caring professions, 2) the resurgence of authoritarianism and its implications for unconscious organizational dynamics, and 3) the potential for a psychoanalytically informed critical healthcare praxis. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: While there remain wide differences of opinion about the utility of psychoanalysis outside of the clinical arena, this paper reveals just how psychoanalysis can inform today's healthcare organizations, and more broadly the social and political organization of health in society.

Millennial managers: exploring the next generation of talent.

PURPOSE: While considerable scholarly attention has been given to "millennials" (those born between 1981 and 1997), little is known of this generation's ability to influence healthcare organizations and managerial roles in particular. This paper aims to clarify why millennials enter the healthcare management field and how their motivations correlate with preferences for working in various healthcare sectors and with various patient populations. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Survey data were collected from 107 millennials pursuing bachelor degrees in healthcare management by using a modified version of the multidimensional work motivation scale. Further data were collected on millennials' preferences for working in various healthcare sectors and with various patient populations. Correlational analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between types of motivation and workplace preferences. Cross-cultural differences were also examined within this generational set. FINDINGS: Results indicate a significant positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and preferences for working on the payer side of the industry and within finance and IT functions. Findings also reveal a significant positive relationship between prosocial motivation and preferences for working with more vulnerable patient populations. Variance in work motivation among cultural sub-sets of millennials suggests different upbringings, or alternatively, cultural relativity of the motivational constructs themselves. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: Despite offering key insights into the next generation of healthcare managers, this study is limited by a sample of millennials from one large, metropolitan university in the USA and thus may not represent the views of all millennials. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: To select, retain and develop the next generation of healthcare managers, it is incumbent upon organizations to better understanding millennials' motivations and preferences. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study is the first of its kind to illuminate the motivations and preferences that underpin a key and growing segment of the healthcare workforce. Millennials, now the largest and most diverse generation on the planet, are poised to change the landscape of health care.

Perils of Professionalization: Chronicling a Crisis and Renewing the Potential of Healthcare Management.

This paper critically examines efforts to "professionalize" the field of healthcare management and its corresponding costs. Drawing upon the scholarly critiques of professionalization in medicine and the broader field of management, this paper seeks to explore the symbolic role professionalization might play in the psyche of its constituents, and specifically its function as a defense against uncertainty and anxiety. This psychodynamic heuristic is then deployed to put forth the hypothesis that an ongoing crisis of professional identity continues to both propel and impede professionalization efforts in healthcare management, giving rise to a litany of standardization pressures that ultimately limit the field's potential. To mitigate these pressures, the call is made for rekindling healthcare management's moral, political, and existential aspects. Specifically, this entails engaging with the deeper themes that flow through the field: the experience of illness and what it means to suffer, the experience of life and what it means to have hope, and the experience of death and dying. It also entails squarely confronting questions of power, poverty and disease, and the pursuit of justice.

Universal healthcare and universal basic income.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to draw parallels between universal basic income (UBI) and universal healthcare, highlighting their conceptual alignment and combined implications for health management and organization. Design/methodology/approach The idea that everyone should receive a set amount of money regardless of employment finds renewed momentum amid increasingly precarious work arrangements and an uncertain job market. Less explored, however, is the connection between this idea and the more established notion of universal healthcare. This paper brings these two ideas together by examining their shared underpinnings in capitalist work relations, and more broadly a global economic system organized by and for corporations at the expense of workers. Findings The argument is made that the underlying dynamics of contemporary capitalism cannot be relied upon to provide for basic health and wealth. These limitations must be offset with social assurances that not only mitigate capitalism's liabilities, but also facilitate innovation and sustainable growth. Originality/value Rarely have UBI and universal healthcare been considered together. This paper examines their shared origins in a capitalist world system and demonstrates their shared justification in a future increasingly devoid of stable work.

Rethinking compassion fatigue.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue for a revision of the concept of compassion fatigue in light of both its history and psychodynamics. Design/methodology/approach This paper calls into question conventional interpretations of compassion fatigue and the assumptions underlying them. As an alternative, a psychoanalytic interpretation is offered that sheds light on the phenomenon's unconscious and organizational dynamics. This interpretation also aligns with the concept's historical use in media and politics. Findings In contrast to the assumption that compassion fatigue arises from too much compassion, historical use of the term suggests just the opposite: compassion fatigue is the result of too little compassion. Healthcare literature on compassion fatigue has not only failed to account for this opposing view, but also the underlying psychodynamics at play. By attending to these neglected dimensions, healthcare scholars and practitioners can gain new insights into compassion fatigue and devise more sustainable interventions. Originality/value This paper reveals hidden dimensions to compassion fatigue that call into question conventional interpretations and offer novel perspectives on a core concern of healthcare work.

A diagnosis of conflict: theoretical barriers to integration in mental health services & their philosophical undercurrents.

This paper examines the philosophical substructure to the theoretical conflicts that permeate contemporary mental health care in the UK. Theoretical conflicts are treated here as those that arise among practitioners holding divergent theoretical orientations towards the phenomena being treated. Such conflicts, although steeped in history, have become revitalized by recent attempts at integrating mental health services that have forced diversely trained practitioners to work collaboratively together, often under one roof. Part I of this paper examines how the history of these conflicts can be understood as a tension between, on the one hand, the medical model and its use by the dominant profession of psychiatry, and on the other, those alternative models and practitioners in some way differentiated from the medical model camp. Examples will be given from recent policy and research to highlight the prevalence of this tension in contemporary practice. Part II of this paper explores the deeper commonalities that lay beneath the theoretical conflict outlined in Part I. These commonalities will be shown to be apart of a captivating framework that has continued to grip the conflict since its inception. By exposing this underlying framework--and the motivations inherent therein--the topic of integration appears in wholly different light, allowing a renewed philosophical basis for integration to emerge.