Judith Allsop

Speaking for Patients and Carers draws on original research and is based on a theoretical framework taken from sociology and politics. It examines health consumer groups in the context of specific conditions: Arthritis and related conditions, cancer, heart and circulatory disease, maternity and childbirth, and mental health. It also analyzes their interaction with government, health professionals and the media, and assesses their impact on policy.

`It has particular appeal for health-care professionals and managers with an interest in corporate and clinical governance' - British Journal of Perioperative Nursing In recent years the health professions have been subject to unprecedented regulatory changes. Exposure of poor practice provoked widespread criticism of self-regulation and calls for a system in which the interests of health care consumers and employers are more fully recognized. Examining the historical and contemporary context, Regulating the Health Professions provides an in-depth analysis of professional self-regulation and the implications of regulatory change for the future of health care. Part One sets out general regulatory issues in the healthcare arena with chapters covering the impact of globalization on the professions, the purpose of professional regulation, the legal context of regulation and the significance of professional codes of ethics. In Part Two, issues specific to the different professions are explored through chapters on medicine, nursing, dentistry, the professions allied to medicine, clinical psychology and alternative medicine. This extremely topical book will be of interest to students, educators and researchers in a wide range of disciplines including sociology, social policy, politics and health studies, and to healthcare professionals and their managers.

Health Policy and the NHS provides a thorough and up-to-date review of the changes in the structure and organisation of the health service. It focuses on how sucessive governments have approached problems of health care, their policy assumptions and the economic and political context of their decision making. Divided into four parts the text considers in turn: the foundations and framework of the NHS, policy issues within the NHS that dominated the government's policy agenda until the late 1980s, health and society and the critiques of health policy which developed in the late 1970s and 1980s, and new directions for health policy in the future.