ABSTRACT
This chapter is an overview of how we, as researchers, attempted to grasp what systematisation looked like in the real world in hospitals and, from that, enhance our understanding (and that of others) of what might help and hinder the application of systemisation in particular hospital settings. Several hospitals used pharmaceutical protocols promoting generic pharmaceuticals as the 'first' (almost only) option for medication, with strict limits on the dosages administered. Furthermore, the number of techniques and methods that can be considered forms of systematisation in healthcare is numerous and steadily increasing. Cost and variability reductions are not the only, or perhaps most significant, care outcomes pursued by proponents of systematisation. For clinicians and patients quality of process and outcome is much more important. Management remained broadly focused on administrative tasks and resource issues associated with the overall patient load while clinicians remained narrowly focused on individual patients' clinical needs.
