High-quality, leading-edge publications

Citation

Hurst, K. (2005), "High-quality, leading-edge publications", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2005.06218baa.001

High-quality, leading-edge publications

It’s an honour to write my first IJHCQA editorial as co-editor. Sue Jackson stepped down in April this year after working tirelessly since 1999 as the journal’s assistant and later co-editor. During her time at IJHCQA, working closely with Robin Gourlay, Editor-in-Chief, and Rachel Murawa, Managing Editor, journal subscriptions and manuscript submissions grew as peer-reviewing processes were strengthened. Consequently, Sue was given the Literati Leading Editor Award in 2002. Sue moved to a new, senior UK National Health Service management post shortly before she stepped down as co-editor, and I’m sure readers will join me and my IJHCQA colleagues to wish Sue every success in her new venture.

I’ve spent many years working as a reviewer with many publishers, which readers with similar experience will know, is an important but peripheral role. The first thing that struck me, sitting at the co-editor’s desk, was the volume of manuscripts that arrive either electronically, and to a lesser extent, as hard copy from authors in many countries. These manuscripts are not only interesting but also high quality – which underlined my slight anxiety about rejecting good work simply owing to finite journal space. The range of health and social care efficiency and effectiveness issues authors cover is impressive, as are the quantitative or qualitative research approaches. The second thing that struck me, in view of the volume of high-quality material submitted to the journal, are our peer reviewers’ abilities and conscientiousness. I’m continually impressed by their insights into manuscript topics and by their constructively critical author feedback. Our reviewers are senior health and social care managers, practitioners or academics working in university health and social care departments in the UK and overseas. In view of demands on reviewers’ time from their substantive posts, all I’m sure make sacrifices as they write meaningful and helpful comments about IJHCQA manuscripts. Consequently, not only is it an honour edit the journal, but it’s also a pleasure to receive and read interesting, leading-edge manuscripts and reviews from around the world.

Seven examples of these high-quality and broad-ranging material submitted to IJHCQA are published in this issue. Taner and Antony, for example, write a sophisticated, quantitative article that explores CAGE’s psychometric properties. The CAGE health-screening instrument is used with patients abusing alcohol or suspected of drinking excessively. Readers will be interested in the way the authors use Taguchi statistical techniques to enhance CAGE’s sensitivity and value. Moreover, their techniques can be transferred to solve other psychometric issues; not only quality management issues, but also broader healthcare ones.

Brown and Bell also describe the nature and value of an instrument for measuring primary care and community patient satisfaction. Readers will value the way the authors discuss their work in an audit and broader research context. Continuing the theme of user involvement, Minogue and her colleagues describe the importance and value of including patients and carers early in mental health service evaluation. Their qualitative work coincides with UK Department of Health guidance that encouraged NHS managers to strengthen health service user participation for professionals, patients and carers’ benefit. Minogue et al.’s article shows we’ve some way to go.

Slattery explores a less-often studied quality issue – retinopathy screening accuracy and reliability. The value of his work arises from the way he addresses screening errors in the context of recent incidents of unreliable screening in the UK, which led to patient harm if not death (National Audit Office, 2001). Slattery’s methods and findings also can be extrapolated. Kolber and Lucado tackle some of the consequences of negligent practice clearly and succinctly. Their literature review examines the medico-legal implications of good and poor clinical record keeping. Increasingly litigious healthcare practice is likely to prompt most healthcare managers and practitioners to adopt the authors’ simple guidelines.

O’Neill’s powerful quantitative article explores North American health service employee satisfaction. Healthcare workers are an organisation’s most valuable resource and few countries are immune from health service recruitment and retention problems. Indeed, the most recent UK NHS vacancy data shows some professional groups’ three-month vacancies running at 17 per cent (Department of Health, 2003). Health service managers increasingly realise that some employees are in a sellers’ market. Managers, therefore, will learn much from O’Neill’s detailed examination of factors that cause employee dissatisfaction.

Finally, Kumar et al.’s literature review and Singapore hospital case study explore theoretical and practical quality assurance issues surrounding hospital purchasing structures, processes, outputs and outcomes. Their analysis, findings and recommendations, as with all the articles in this issue, are easily extrapolated to other healthcare services.

Keith HurstNuffield Health and Social Care Policy Group, Health Sciences and Public Health Research Institute, Leeds University, Leeds, UK