Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34393612›Full record

ArticleHealth, risk & society2021

Layering risk work amidst an emerging crisis: an ethnographic study on the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in a university hospital in the Netherlands.

Bert de Graaff, Jenske Bal, Roland Bal

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Health, risk & society, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Bert de GraaffErasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9840-8626
Jenske BalErasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0887-6587
Roland BalErasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7202-5053

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic early 2020 has confronted healthcare sectors with risks and uncertainties on an unprecedented scale in recent history. Healthcare organisations faced acute problems, the answers to which had to be provided, and recalibrated, at short notice and informally. University hospitals played a pivotal role in providing these answers and in (re)calibrating institutional arrangements. Based on ethnographic research in an elite university hospital in the Netherlands, in this article we explore the concrete practices of governing risks and uncertainties that COVID-19 posed for the organisation of healthcare. Our fieldwork consisted of the observation of meetings at the level of the hospital boards, the staff, and the regional level. We collected relevant documents and interviewed key-actors. This approach offers us a large dataset on acute risk governance 'from within' and allows us to offer a layered ethnographic account of managerial practices. In our analysis we focus on conceptualising the work-as-done in the university hospital as risk work. We show how the risk work of our participants is generally characterised by high speed and delineated by scarcities. We differentiate between three modes of risk work: working on numbers, working on expertise and working on logistics. This risk work appears innovative, but our analysis stresses how participants' work happened in interaction with traditional institutional logics and routines.

Indexed as

COVID-19healthcareinstitutional layeringorganisational ethnographyrisk governancerisk workSARS-CoV-2

Identifiers

PMID34393612
PMCPMC8352375

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.