Paper info: States Of An Episodic Drug Treatment Relationship
Title
States Of An Episodic Drug Treatment Relationship
Authors
Anita Virta and
Jaana Tähtinen
Jaana Tähtinen
Turku School of Economics and Business Administration
Finland
Place of Publication
The paper was published at the 28th IMP-conference in Rome, Italy in 2012.
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Abstract
This paper models the states that an episodic relationship in drug treatment travels through. Thus far, relationships that have a predetermined end date have been left almost unstudied, although their existence in various contexts is not rare. Although the chosen context—institutional substance abuse treatment—isunique in many ways, the process model suggested in this paper canbe applied to understand other episodic buyer-seller relationships, both inhealthcare and elsewhere.The paper describesan interpretative longitudinal case study, with interviews and observations as the empirical data. Both a follow-up and historical methods of empirically capturing the time dimension and the underlying mechanisms of the process wereapplied. The findings divide the process of an episodic relationshipintofour states, each consisting of a number of events and actions.