MONTEIRO, Ileana Pardal. Hospital: uma organização de profissionais . []. , 17, 2, pp.317-325. ISSN 0870-8231.

Recognising the importance of hospital management to face the serious problems western health system has to deal with and verifying that in Portugal little research have been done in this area, we tried to give a (limited) contribution to this subject. From a literature review, in which we detached the most important models, we focused ourselves on Henri Mintzberg´s (1982) professional bureaucracy, for it seems a rather cross-cultural configuration. In fact, Mintzberg described it in the USA, and Michel Cremadez (1992) showed this structure in France. We figured, it might as well emerge in a portuguese hospital. Therefore, we interviewed all administration's board members and the medical department's chiefs and nurse hierarchy of a small hospital in the South of Portugal which have recently evolved from an humanistic structure to a more differentiated one. We have then analysed the emergent structure. From the content analysis were able to conclude that it's structure is very similar to Mintzberg's professional bureaucracy configuration.

: Hospital structure; professional burocracy; loosely coupled systems.

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