Public reporting of clinical performance is increasingly used in many countries to improve quality and enhance accountability of the health system. The assumption is that greater transparency will stimulate improvements by clinicians in response to peer pressure, patient choice or competition. The international diffusion of public reporting might suggest greater similarity between health systems. Alternatively, national and local contexts (including health system imperatives, professional power and organisational culture) might continue to shape its form and impact, implying continued divergence. The paper considers public reporting in the USA and England through the lens of Scott's 'pillars' institutional framework. The USA was arguably the first country to adopt public reporting systematically in the late 1980s. England is a more recent adopter; it is now being widely adopted through the National Health Service (NHS). Drawing on qualitative data from California and England, this paper compares the behavioural and policy responses to public reporting by health system stakeholders at micro, meso and macro levels and through the intersection of ideas, interests, institutions and individuals through. The interplay between the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars helps explain the observed patterns of on-going divergence.

Professional autonomy has come under greater scrutiny due to managerialism, consumerism, information and communication technologies (ICT), and the changing composition of professions themselves. This scrutiny is often portrayed as a tension between professional and managerial logics. Recently, medical autonomy has increasingly been shaped in terms of transparency, where publication of clinical performance (via ICT) might be a more pervasive form of surveillance. Such transparency may have the potential for a more explicit managerial logic but is contested by clinicians. This paper applies notions of surveillance to public reporting of cardiac surgery, involving the online publication of mortality rates of named surgeons. It draws on qualitative data from a case-study of cardiac surgeons in one hospital, incorporating interviews with health care managers and national policymakers in England. We examine how managerial logics are mediated by professional autonomy, generating patterns of enrolment, resistance and reactivity to public reporting. The managerial 'gaze' of public reporting is becoming widespread but the surgical specialty is accommodating it, leading to a re-assertion of knowledge, based on professional definitions. The paper assesses whether this form of surveillance is challenging to or being assimilated by the medical profession, thereby recasting the profession itself.

Chronic kidney disease stage 5 is a global health challenge in the context of population ageing across the world. The range of treatment options available to patients at all ages has increased and includes transplantation and dialysis. However, these options are often seen as inappropriate for older frailer patients who are now offered the option of conservative kidney management, which is presented as a non-invasive alternative to dialysis, involving symptom management and addressing psychosocial needs. In this study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 26 close persons caring for someone with chronic kidney disease stage 5 in the United Kingdom to investigate how conservative kidney management interacted with implicit ideas of ageing, in both the experience of conservative kidney management and the understanding of the prognosis and future care of the kidney disease. Our findings highlighted participant confusion about the nature of conservative kidney management, which stems from an initial lack of clarity about how conservative kidney management differed from conventional treatments for chronic kidney disease stage 5. In particular, some respondents were not aware of the implicit palliative nature of the intervention or indeed the inevitable end-of-life issues. Although these findings can be situated within the context of communication failure, we would further argue that they also bring to the surface tensions in the discourses surrounding ageing and old age, drawing on the use of a 'natural' and a 'normal' paradigm of ageing. In the context of chronic kidney disease stage 5, more patients are being dialysed at older ages, but conservative kidney management is being advanced as a better option than dialysis in terms of quality of life and experience. However, in doing so, conservative kidney management implicitly draws on a notion of older age that echoes natural ageing rather than advocate a more interventionist approach. The role of discourses of ageing in the provision of treatments for conservative kidney management has not previously been acknowledged, and this article addresses this gap.

Chronic and life-threatening conditions are widely thought to shatter the lives of those affected. In this article, we examine the accounts of 19 older people diagnosed with late stage chronic kidney disease who declined dialysis. Accounts were collected through in-depth interview in the United Kingdom (March–November, 2010). Drawing on a phenomenological approach, we focus particularly on the embodied and lived experience of the condition and on how participants constructed treatment modalities and approached treatment choice. We look toward contemporary elaborations of the conceptual framework of biographical disruption to illustrate how participants managed to contain the intrusion of illness and maintain continuity in their lives. We argue that three interactive phenomena mitigated the potential for disruption and allowed participants to maintain continuity: (a) the framing of illness as “old age”; (b) the prior experience of serious illness; and (c) the choice of the treatment with the least potential for disruption. We conclude that a diagnosis of chronic illness in late life does not inevitably shatter lives or engender biographical disruption. Instead, people are able to construct continuity owing to complex narrative interpretations of diagnosis, sensation and treatment choices.

PURPOSE:In recent years, the clinical performance of named cardiac surgeons in England has been disclosed. This paper aims to explore the nature and impact of disclosure of clinical performance.DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH:The paper draws on literature from across the social sciences to assess the impact of disclosure, as a form of transparency, in improving clinical performance. Specifically, it employs the "programme theory" of disclosure.FINDINGS:The "programme theory" of disclosure involves identification, naming, public sanction and recipient response. Named individual (consultant) surgeons have been identified through disclosure but this masks the contribution of the clinical team, including junior surgeons. Mortality is the prime performance measure but given low mortality rates, there are problems interpreting this measure. The naming of surgeons has been achieved through disclosure on web sites, developed between the health-care regulator and the surgical profession itself. However, participation remains voluntary. The intention of disclosure is that interested parties (especially patients) will shun poorly performing surgeons. However, these parties' willingness and ability to exercise this sanction appears limited. Surgeons' responses are emergent but about a quarter of surgeons are not participating currently. Fears that surgeons would avoid high-risk patients seem to have been unrealised. While disclosure may have a small effect on individual reputations, the surgical profession as a whole has embraced disclosure.ORIGINALITY/VALUE:While the aim of disclosure has been to create a transparent medical system and to improve clinical performance, disclosure may have the opposite effect, concealing some performance issues and possibly strengthening professional autonomy. Disclosure therefore represents greater transparency in health-care but it is uncertain whether it will improve performance in the ways that the policy intends.

This mixed-methods study looks at the relationship between adversity and resilience. It examines the dynamics of protection in a sub-sample of the Boyd Orr cohort that are aged between 70 and 80 years of age (n = 139). We used a questionnaire and activity diaries to gather a range of quantitative data, and interviews using lifegrids to explore past and present experiences of adversity. Sampling of 32 individuals was based on resilient and vulnerable outcomes (16 cases respectively), measured quantitatively as good or poor quality of life (CASP-19) in the presence of one or more adversities such as ill health or stress. The analysis explored adversity and protection in relationships, retirement, and health. Participants with resilient outcomes drew upon social and individual resources in the face of adversity, in particular resources that stabilised life change by providing continuity. These included: constructing narratives that reinterpreted past adversity in light of recent ones; maintaining social roles and activities that had previously brought pleasure or a sense of mastery; relying on tried and tested coping strategies; support from close ongoing relationships. Participants with vulnerable outcomes, however, described more severe adversities, suggesting that resilience is also dependent on the degree and impact of this experience.

Kidney disease is defined as end-stage when a patient’s glomerular filtration rate has fallen to <15 ml/min/ 1.73 m2 [1]. Mortality associated with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) is high [2]. The incidence of treated ESKD is rising in the western world, with a corresponding increase in the incidence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, especially in ethnic minority groups. Survival on dialysis has been shown to be poorer in the older age group, especially in patients with increased comorbidity and in those whose functional status at the start of dialysis is poor [3]. Whilst renal transplant rates vary between different countries [4], the liberalization in the acceptance of older people into renal replacement therapy (RRT) programmes, together with changes in population demographics and the fact that kidney transplantation is less suitable for this group of older patients, means that dialysis may be the only treatment option available for an increasing number of patients aged 65 years and over [5]. Recent health policy changes in the OECD countries [6,7] acknowledge that end of life care may be more appropriate for some of these people, and maximum conservative management programmes (where residual renal function is supported, haemoglobin levels maintained and symptoms relieved) have been introduced into many renal units, particularly in the United Kingdom [6]. The onset of ESKD and subsequent recommendation of dialysis as a treatment option involves a change in lifestyle for both patients and close persons [8]. Even before end-stage disease is reached, as renal function deteriorates,