TY - JOUR
T1 - Varieties of improvement expertise
T2 - Knowledge and contestation in health-care improvement
AU - Cribb, Alan
AU - Entwistle, Vikki
AU - Mitchell, Polly
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust (Grant number 209811/Z/17/Z). For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. In addition we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - The ‘improvement’ of health care is now established and growing as a field of research and practice. This article, based on qualitative data from interviews with 21 senior leaders in this field, analyses the growth of improvement expertise as not simply an expansion but also a multiplication of ‘ways of knowing’. It illustrates how health-care improvement is an area where contests about relevant kinds of knowledge, approaches and purposes proliferate and intersect. One dimension of this story relates to the increasing relevance of sociological expertise—both as a disciplinary contributor to this arena of research and practice and as a spur to reflexive critique. The analysis highlights the threat of persistent hierarchies within improvement expertise reproducing and amplifying restricted conceptions of both improvement and ‘better’ health care.
AB - The ‘improvement’ of health care is now established and growing as a field of research and practice. This article, based on qualitative data from interviews with 21 senior leaders in this field, analyses the growth of improvement expertise as not simply an expansion but also a multiplication of ‘ways of knowing’. It illustrates how health-care improvement is an area where contests about relevant kinds of knowledge, approaches and purposes proliferate and intersect. One dimension of this story relates to the increasing relevance of sociological expertise—both as a disciplinary contributor to this arena of research and practice and as a spur to reflexive critique. The analysis highlights the threat of persistent hierarchies within improvement expertise reproducing and amplifying restricted conceptions of both improvement and ‘better’ health care.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85147304274&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1467-9566.13616
DO - 10.1111/1467-9566.13616
M3 - Article
SN - 0141-9889
VL - 45
SP - 734
EP - 753
JO - Sociology of Health and Illness
JF - Sociology of Health and Illness
IS - 4
ER -