Management education at the Nordic School of Public Health

This article introduces the Program of Health Services Management at the Nordic School of Public Health in Gothenburg, Sweden, after its reorganization in 1987. The school is a joint effort of the governments of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden. As background, some research on the effects of management training for physicians and on the significance of leadership is presented. This article focuses on the relationship between administration, management, and leadership. The program aims at a holistic approach. The appendix presents the main purposes and content of the program.

Top management program: management development in New Zealand's health services

This article describes New Zealand's program for developing managers in health services, called the National Management Development Program (NMDP), run by a newly established unit of the Department of Health. This is a set of programs for training various groups of individuals in health administration: those with no experience who wish to enter the field, those in a particular area of health, and those who are already managers in the health field. The Top Management Program, designed for professionals already heading health agencies, offers continuing education as a sustained approach to improving individual management ability.

Undergraduate health administration education in the 1990s

The current destabilizing period of the health care industry and higher education has major implications for undergraduate education, especially given its adolescent stage of development. Although undergraduate programs have progressed a great deal in gaining acceptance within the industry and the academy, it must not be assumed that curricula, programs, or a consortium of programs can rest on past accomplishments. This paper has attempted to describe the threats and opportunities facing undergraduate programs and to discuss some strategies for future development that might be explored collectively or individually. It is hoped that the above observations will provoke a healthy dialogue as well as a plan of action by undergraduate programs. Undergraduate health administration programs must respond to the future and make themselves relevant and necessary to the new challenges facing the field of both practice and higher education.

Health insurance in the health administration curriculum

Managers and policymakers knowledgeable in the delivery and financing of health care are needed in the health care industry, and health administration programs can meet this need by expanding course offerings which consider the role and operations of insurers. This paper surveys the major topics in the field of health insurance and presents a course overview for an introduction to the field of health insurance for health administration students.

Accreditation, evaluation, and review in Australian programs: the end of the beginning?

The approaches to accreditation, evaluation and review, particularly in health services management education, in the U.S.A. and England are contrasted briefly. The Australian approaches, in first a binary system and then a unified national system, are described. Differences between the proposals in the Federal Policy Statement on higher education and actual practice in the establishment of accreditation as an external process with developmental objectives are analyzed. The introductory approach in developing a methodology for program self-review is outlined, as is the extensive but largely informal system of evaluation.

The Victorian Management Residency Programme

This paper describes an innovative approach to the development of health managers in the Victorian health system. Under what is known as the Management Residency Programme, young graduates are recruited to undertake a rigorous two year programme which blends the academic specialisation necessary for health managers, with the techniques of action learning available through exposure to a range of management situations in various field placements. The proponents of action research are seriously challenging the traditional approach to management education and the Management Residency Programme provides a unique opportunity to maximise the benefits of each philosophy.