This case study aims to explore how leadership and management applies to a hypothetical scenario, focussing on a dental practice. As a teaching exercise, it may enable dentists and allied workers to reflect on the leadership and management styles used within their workplaces, and on their own abilities.
The hypothetical scenario considers a dental practice, its organisational structure, and leadership and management practices. The contemporary leadership and management theories of transformational leadership and contingency management are next discussed. These are then compared with the practices used in the dental practice. The case study concludes with recommendations.
The hypothetical scenario reveals that bureaucratic and transactional leadership and management culture exists within the dental practice, which may be attributable to many factors. The case study suggests that no single manner of leadership and management is completely correct or greater than another. There may be a need for bureaucratic, transactional, transformational, contingency and other approaches, and only if they shall be used in the best interests of the workforce and workplace.
Many dental practice workers may be oblivious to their own leadership and management techniques, and thus, the resultant impact on teammates. Negative approaches may contribute towards poor morale and a high turnover of staff. To become more skilful at applying certain approaches to given situations, dentists and allied workers may well need to pursue continuing professional development training in leadership and management.

In healthcare practice, care providers are confronted with tragic situations, in which they are expected to make choices and decisions that can have far-reaching consequences. This article investigates the role of moral case deliberation (MCD) in dealing with tragic situations. It focuses on experiences of care givers involved in the treatment of a pregnant woman with a brain tumour, and their evaluation of a series of MCD meetings in which the dilemmas around care were discussed. The study was qualitative, focusing on the views and experiences of the participants. A case study design is used by conducting semi-structured interviews (N = 10) with health care professionals who both played a role in the treatment of the patient and attended the MCD. The results show that MCD helps people to deal with tragic situations. An important element of MCD in this respect is making explicit the dilemma and the damage, demonstrating that there is no simple solution. MCD prompts participants to formulate and share personal experiences with one another and thus helps to create a shared perception of the situation as tragic. The article concludes that MCD contributes to the sharing of tragic experiences, and fosters mutual interaction during a tragedy. Its value could be increased through explicit reflection on the aspect of contingency that characterises tragedy.

BACKGROUND: Recent research shows that parental sensitivity can explain a significant and unique amount of growth in speech and language outcomes in children with cochlear implants. In this intervention study we explored the impact of an intervention designed to support parental sensitivity on children\'s communication development.
OBJECTIVE: This study tests the effect of a complex intervention in the context of childhood hearing impairment using a case study design of three families. Propositions for each case were made using parental report of the child\'s development in an attempt to identify change in outcome measurements that were not likely to be due to general development in the child or a halo effect from the intervention.
RESULTS: Multiple pre- and post-intervention measures were taken. Outcome measures were mother-child contingencies to vocal utterances, emotional availability and an assessment of early communication in the child. Results for each case showed that improvements in some outcome measurements were found after the intervention and were maintained at follow-up.
CONCLUSIONS: Taking account of developmental change in intervention studies with children is challenging. Single-subject intervention studies can be designed to allow research interventions to be tailored to meet families\' specific needs. Video interaction guidance may support pre-linguistic communicative development in children with hearing impairment.