In this opinion piece, the author reflects on some similarities with the National Health Service (NHS) in England, which has a long history of leadership tensions as hospital trusts have tried to wrestle administrative and operational decision-making away from clinicians and consultants.

The article entitled "Changes Across Three Editions of The Suicidal Patient: Clinical and Legal Standards of Care: Relevance to Counseling Centers" by Paul Polychronis (EJ1123965) provides an informative summary of the evolution of Bongar & Sullivan's (2013) book The Suicidal Patient: Clinical and Legal Standards of Care across…

As someone who has been involved in college mental health in three different roles, the author would say those who work in this field inhabit a strange space. College mental health centers are generally seen as somewhat peripheral to the core mission of universities by upper administration. Counseling centers do not reside within academic…

The preceding article by Hawton and colleagues reporting on a prospective study of adolescents presenting with self-harm to Accident and Emergency departments (A&E) is one of the largest epidemiological studies to examine the long-term outcomes of self-harm in children and adolescents. After a median of 6 years nearly 30% re-presented to A&E with…

This article presents the author's observations on a clinical extract which describes a child psychotherapist working with Maya, a seriously ill child, in a hospital. The author said that the hospital setting raises the question of what it is like to apply child psychotherapists' thinking within a hospital setting, and how they adapt the way they…

This article presents cases from informal situations of grief and a project called "I and death". These cases suggest that different worldviews affect the process of grief, and that children often do not get the support they need in terms of spiritual care. This affects attitudes towards grief in adulthood. Social practices of encountering death…

As psychotherapists in hospitals, they need as holistic an understanding as possible of the organisation, its anxieties, defences and ways of splitting and projecting what is unbearable, frightening, incomprehensible, and besides this, they need to understand they fit in. In this article, the author shares her comments on a clinical extract…

This moving clinical account describes the psychotherapeutic work of a child psychotherapist undertaken in a hospital room with 13-year-old Maya, after the sudden onset of a terrifying and serious illness, Guillain-Barre syndrome, leaving her with paralysis and extreme weakness. The first session takes place almost three weeks after Maya's…

Bowen White is a physician. He founded the Department of Preventive and Stress Medicine at the Baptist Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1983 and later established the center's Department of Wellness and Health Promotion. White is also a clown who goes by the name of Dr. Jerko. For years he mixed these dual interests, skills, and egos…

This is an edited version of a recent interview with Annette Mendelsohn, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, UK. It aims to make available in published form Mendelsohn's thinking and approach in relation to her work with traumatised children in a hospital setting. Mendelsohn also discusses her work in a…

Hospital porters often feel so little valued in their jobs that they are uninterested even in training that could get them out of their rut. In an attempt to change what he considered an underlying negative perception regarding portering, in 1999, the author founded the Porters 2000 forum. As the chair, and with the support of members, he wrote to…

University hospitals came into existence as an ancillary activity, providing future physicians with important educational experiences, then became established as an expected part of the institution. Technological advances and rising costs caused universities to sell hospitals, potentially changing their role in the educational system. Universities…

Interviews Diane Schulz, president of Child Care in Health Care, discussing the status of on-site or near-site child care for hospital employees. Considers the trend in hospital-based care, organization, support, customers, and challenges faced by these day care centers. (JPB)

Considers signs and symptoms that hospital-based social work may be in jeopardy. Presents arguments justifying social work in hospital settings, then considers shift to nonprofessional staffing, generalists versus specialists, decentralization, funding bases, and valuing the contribution of social work. (NB)

Modern American medical education has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century when the idea of medical practice as an assortment of independent private ventures became institutionalized, and when the wealth of the industrial revolution led to the adoption of German standards of academic medical research. These events set the stage for our…