Medical Self Regulation

Self-regulation theory focuses on the ways in which individuals direct and monitor their activities and emotions in order to attain their goals. This text presents recent developments in health psychology research, covering topics such as representational beliefs, anxiety and personality.

Self-regulation constitutes an important aspect of the regulatory and oversight process governing professionals. This book focuses directly on medical self-regulation in the context of both the wider regulatory framework and that of other regulatory models. Through a critical consideration of recent events, including high-profile and controversial cases, it is demonstrated that the self-regulatory process has failed and that only fundamental restructuring and a radical change in attitudes on the part of members of the profession can repair the damage. Attention is also given to the recent changes, current proposals for change and to alternative regulatory models. Medical Self-Regulation will be of international interest, appealing to policy makers, as well as students and practitioners in the fields of medicine, medical law and sociology and professional regulation.

Self-regulation has long been at the core of sociological understandings of what it means to be a "profession." However, the historical processes resulting in the formation of self-regulating professions have not been well understood. In Regulating Professions, Tracey L. Adams explores the emergence of self-regulating professions in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia from Confederation to 1940. Adams’s in-depth research reveals the backstory of those occupations deemed worthy to regulate, such as medicine, law, dentistry, and land surveying, and how they were regulated. Adams evaluates sociological explanations for professionalization and its regulation by analysing their applicability to the Canadian experience and especially the role played by the state. By considering the role of all those involved in creating the professional landscape in Canada, Adams provides a clear picture of the process and illuminates how important this has been in building Canadian institutions and society.

This text offers a comprehensive overview of new approaches to health-related behaviour from a self-regulation perspective. The authors outline the assumptions on which self-regulation theories are based, discuss recent research and draw out the implications for practice with a particular focus on changing health behaviour. The book is arranged in two sections – Goal Setting and Goal Activation in Health Behaviour and Goal Striving and Goal Persistence. The epilogue compares self-regulation theories with the prevailing social-cognitive models.

This authoritative handbook reviews the breadth of current knowledge on the conscious and nonconscious processes by which people regulate their thoughts, emotions, attention, behavior, and impulses. Individual differences in self-regulatory capacities are explored, as are developmental pathways. The volume examines how self-regulation shapes, and is shaped by, social relationships. Failures of self-regulation are also addressed, in chapters on addictions, overeating, compulsive spending, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Wherever possible, contributors identify implications of the research for helping people enhance their self-regulatory capacities and pursue desired goals. New to This Edition: * Incorporates significant scientific advances and many new topics. * Increased attention to the social basis of self-regulation. * Chapters on working memory, construal-level theory, temptation, executive functioning in children, self-regulation in older adults, self-harming goal pursuit, interpersonal relationships, religion, and impulsivity as a personality trait.

Self-regulation theory focuses on the ways in which individuals direct and monitor their activities and emotions in order to attain their goals. It plays an increasingly important role in health psychology research. The Self-regulation of Health and Illness Behaviour presents an up-to-date account of the latest developments in the field. Individual contributions cover a wide range of issues including representational beliefs about chronic illness, cultural influences on illness representations, the role of anxiety and defensive denial in health-related experiences and behaviours, the contribution of personality, and the social dynamics underlying gender differences in adaptation to illness. Particular attention is given to the implications for designing effective health interventions and messages. Integrating theoretical and empirical developments, this text provides both researchers and professionals with a comprehensive review of self-regulation and health.

This book is concerned with the sociological analysis of the professions and professional self-regulation. This is the view that professionals such as doctors should be left alone to manage their own affairs in regards to members training, practice and discipline. Over the last two decades social scientists from the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have discussed how governments are increasingly acting to open up the previously 'closed shop' field of professional regulation. Indeed, many have been vocal advocates of the need to promote greater inter-professional co-operation and managerial and public involvement in the regulation of professional forms of expertise. The United Kingdom is no exception. A series of high profile medical malpractice cases have caused sociologists to join patient rights advocates, lawyers, politicians and the media in calling for reforms in the regulation of doctors. Grounded in contemporary health and social policy developments in the United Kingdom, including the 2008 Health and Social Care Act, this book undertakes an in-depth analysis of the development of the principle of professional self-regulation in relation to the evolution of the modern medical profession and contemporary calls for reform in the governance of doctors. In doing so it highlights how medical elites are advocating a new medical professionalism, sometimes called professionally-led medical regulation, as they seek to maintain the principle of medical self-regulation, albeit in a new more publicly accountable form. Against this background the results of original empirical research undertaken with doctors to identify their experiences and perceptions of these reforms is presented and analysed in light of current policy developments as well as relevant theoretical sociological frameworks.