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Online medical teams (OMTs) have emerged as an innovative healthcare service mode that relies on the collaboration of doctors to produce comprehensive medical recommendations. This study delves into the relationship between knowledge collaboration and team performance in OMTs and examines the complex effects of participation patterns.

The analysis uses a dataset that consists of 2,180 OMTs involving 8,689 doctors. Ordinary least squares regression with robust standard error is adopted for data analysis.

Our findings demonstrate a positive influence of knowledge collaboration on OMT performance. Leader participation weakens the relationship between knowledge collaboration and team performance, whereas multidisciplinary participation strengthens it. Passive participation and chief doctor participation have no significant effect on the association between knowledge collaboration and OMT performance.

This study provides valuable insights into how knowledge collaboration shapes OMTs' performance and reveals how the participation of different types of members affects outcomes. Our findings offer important practical implications for the optimization of online health platforms and for enhancing the effectiveness of collaborative healthcare delivery.

This article aims to review some of the literature relating to the concept of effective engagement of doctors with health service redesign and delivery and discuss the relevance in light of recent developments from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

This article is a literature overview and personal reflection. It contains elements of personal reflection on the recent historical policy changes that have the potential to lead to frontline changes in the development of managerial training for doctors and how this could benefit healthcare systems

For services to be effective doctors need to be engaged in their design. Historically the engagement of doctors in this process has been haphazard and often taken on by doctors who have been provided with little management training. This has led to internal and external conflict and possibly been a contributing factor to lack of clinical engagement. The recent suggestions by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement around mandatory management training for doctors throughout all stages of their training as doctors has the potential to improve effective clinical engagement of doctors in service redesign and delivery and therefore their potential for success.

This paper has been written by a consultant psychiatrist who is involved with frontline delivery of services, medical management and training of doctors and medical students.

Notes that medical participation in organization‐wide quality programmes and leadership of quality is commonly viewed as the key to a successful programme. Reviews and reports research into doctors’ involvement in such programmes as distinct from doctors’ involvement in medical quality activities. Reveals the lack of systematic evidence on the subject, suggests areas for future research, and summarizes what is known. Gives recommendations based on reported research and experience for quality training for doctors and how medical managers might engage their colleagues and other professions in quality programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature and summarises the benefits and limitations of having doctors in health management roles in today’s complex health environment.

This paper reviews the current literature on this topic.

Hospitals have evolved from being professional bureaucracies to being managed professional business with clinical directorates in place that are medically led.

Limitations include the difficulty doctors have balancing clinical duties and management, restricted profession-specific view and the lack of management competencies and/or training.

The benefits of having doctors in health management include bottom-up leadership, specialised knowledge of the profession, expert knowledge of clinical care, greater political influence, effective change champions to have on-side, frontline leadership and management, improved communication between doctors and senior management, advocacy for patient safety and quality, greater credibility with public and peers and the perception that doctors have more power and influence compared to other health professionals can be leveraged.

Overall, there are more benefits than there are limitations to having doctors in health management but there is a need for more management training for doctors.

Based upon empirical research conducted in 1993, attempts to illustrate the implications of efforts to bring doctors into management. It addresses in particular the role of key appointments such as the medical director and clinical directors and the perceptions of these roles. Doctors continue to demonstrate themselves to be reluctant managers and this continues to pose problems for the aspirations contained in Working for Patients. Crucial questions must be asked about whether management represents a productive use of doctors′ time and whether the NHS can afford premium rates for largely inexperienced managers. Identifies changes that have taken place to date and indicates that doctors are, for the most part, still lukewarm about a career in medical management.

To explore theoretically the reasons for the modest uptake of clinical governance practices by taking the literature on the origin of tensions between doctors and managers as the starting‐point.

The approaches of doctors and managers to the division and coordination of medical work are analysed theoretically from a twofold perspective that combines insights from sociologists' theories on “professionalism” and administrative scientists' theories on “management science”.

The combined perspective theoretically explains the problems between doctors and managers that frustrate the uptake of clinical governance practices. By inference from this theoretical analysis, a twofold agenda for a constructive dialogue is proposed. Doctors and managers must develop a shared vision of the division and coordination of medical work as well as discussing the values, norms and goals underlying patient care. It is questionable, however, whether this agenda is currently adequately addressed.

This paper provides a theoretical underpinning for the dialogue between doctors and managers. It may be enlightening for all doctors and managers working in the field.

Medicalization is the increasing social control of the everyday by medical experts. It is a key concept in the sociology of health and illness because it sees medicine as not merely a scientific endeavor, but a social one as well. Medicalization is a “process whereby more and more of everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence, and supervision” (Zola, 1983, p. 295); previously these areas of everyday life were viewed in religious or moral terms (Conrad & Schneider, 1980; Weeks, 2003). More specifically, medicalization is the process of “defining a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem, or using a medical intervention to ‘treat’ it” (Conrad, 1992, p. 211). Sociologists have used this concept to describe the shift in the site of decision-making and knowledge about health from the lay public to the medical profession.

Using data from the General Social Survey (2002), structural equation modeling is employed to examine the intersections and relationships between various socio-demographic and contextual variables, patient trust, and patient preference for behaviors that indicate a desire to be an active health care participant. In so doing, a gap in the literature is addressed by uniting previous research on patient trust with research on patient participation. Findings reveal that patient trust in doctors and various socio-demographic and contextual variables are associated with people wanting to participate in the health care process by learning about medical issues on their own and by contributing to medical decisions. Results also shed new light on past research, which finds a relationship between various socio-demographic variables and patient trust. Specifically, they highlight the importance of distinguishing between patient trust in doctors and patient trust in the broader health care institution and the economic pressures it exerts on doctors. A discussion of what these findings might mean for our understanding of the doctor-patient relationship and the delivery of health care concludes the chapter.

Frequently women are attended by someone other than their chosen doctor during labor and delivery, that is, an “on-call” doctor. This chapter draws from interviews with 19 women who gave birth in a Mid-Atlantic state during late 1995 and early 1996. Of these women, 13 received care from an on-call doctor. Using existing social–psychological perspectives, the authors analyze situations in which an on-call doctor was present, and how this provider influenced women's birth experiences as well as satisfaction with those experiences. In general, women do not expect or desire on-call doctors’ presence. As a result, they may rely on obstetric nurses, rather than these unfamiliar doctors, when they need information or support.