Centre for Policy on Ageing



Patient turnover in a new psychogeriatric day hospital — a pluralistic evaluation
Author(s)	Gilbert Smith, Caroline Cantley, Valerie Ritman
Journal title	Ageing and Society, vol 3, part 3, November 1983
Pages	pp 325-356
Keywords	Day hospitals ; Psychogeriatric patients ; Admission [hospitals] ; Discharge [hospitals] ; Evaluation.
Annotation	Studies designed to evaluate the services of a health or welfare institution face the major difficulty of selecting evaluative criteria to serve as measures of successful performance. This paper explores that difficulty in the context of a study of a new psychogeriatric day hospital. The study and its methods of a data collection are described. 'Patient turnover' features prominently as a measure of success within the hospital. Consultants, nurses, general practitioners, social workers, staff of a related hospital and patients' relatives interpret this measure in different ways and adopt different strategies to pursue 'success' in their own interests. These differences are described. The paper concludes that a 'pluralistic evaluation' has several advantages as compared to other approaches.
Accession Number	CPA-000925209 A
Classmark	LDD: LF:E: LD:QKH: LD:QKJ: 4C
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.