Hospitals and Patients

This book examines the current social crisis in American medicine. The authors, two well-known sociologists, search out--and find--the roots of this crisis in three areas: the organization of the hospital, the attitudes of the hospital toward its patients, and the relationship of hospitals to one another.

Rosengren and Lefton apply the latest theories of organization to each of these areas and give special attention to the urgent need for more and better organization of medical care as well as to new ways of delivering it. In doing so they carry out a sociological examination of today's hospital that is of far broader scope than has been achieved until now.

By combining a summary of sociological research on hospitals with a new theoretical approach to relevant patterns of organization the authors make available a readable book of immediate usefulness not only to researchers and scholars but also to students and teachers in medical sociology, hospital administration, and community organization as well as in social science courses offered in medical schools and schools of nursing.

William R. Rosengren is emeritus professor of sociology. He has been a Senior Research Fulbright Scholar at Aberdeen Medical School and a research sociologist at a children's psychiatric hospital. He has published numerous scholarly articles and is co-editor and a contributor to Organizational Membership.

Mark Lefton was professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. He has headed research projects for the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institute of Mental Health. Co-author of Women after Treatment, he has co-edited and contributed to several books in related fields.