Work MAP Team

Current Research Projects

New Health Care Work

The movement of a wide array of health care services from traditional care settings to other places is an important manifestation of the new economy. Advances in technology and in the health sciences, together with fiscal concerns, have dramatically increased the types and range of settings used for health care, and transformed health care worksites. Many physical and symbolic boundaries separating professional, alternative, allied, and unpaid health care providers have disintegrated, and those between actual and virtual sites of health care work are blurred. Consequently, the socio-spatial-discursive organization of health care work has been profoundly changed, new human and technological networks have evolved, and new configurations of authority and accountability have developed.

This MAP Team will address: the organization and management of health care work from multiple perspectives and the implications of using places and resources designed for other purposes for the provision of health care work. The Team will emphasize the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research Theme, Health Human Resources, and will undertake research and knowledge transfer activities focused on increasing professional recruitment and retention rates into non-traditional health services workplaces.

Faculty will examine: occupational health issues pertinent to health care delivery in traditional (e.g. hospitals or clinics) and non-traditional health care work environments (e.g. private homes or telehealth call centres); new devices and tools created to enhance workplace safety in new health care settings; curriculum development opportunities to enhance professional competence in light of changing health care workplaces; and models for regulating geographically-dispersed and technology-mediated health care work. Issues pertaining to Improving Quality, Health Care Evaluation and Technology Assessment; and Public Advice Seeking in an Era of eHealth will also be addressed.

HCTP Faculty Mentors include: Audrey Laporte (Labour Economics), and Andreas Laupacis (Medicine/Technology Assessment).