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This article draws on the evaluation of a handyperson service which augments health and social services to enable older frail people to remain living at home. It considers current trends and policy, and asks why practical help is under‐valued by professionals caring for older people.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is an important health problem throughout the world. Association between DM and oral diseases has been reported and dental clinic is indicated to be one of the suitable venues for the screening of DM. The purpose of this paper is to determine patients’ attitude toward DM screening in dental clinics.

The anonymous, self-administered questionnaires of five-point response scale questions were distributed to convenience samples of adult patients (⩾25 years) attending one of the dental settings. These dental settings were divided into the university/hospital-based dental clinics (encompassing two university-based and five hospital-based dental clinics) or the private dental clinics (encompassing two private, and one special (after office hour) clinic of a faculty of dentistry). The questions could be categorized into three groups regarding importance, willingness, and agreement of DM screening in dental settings. Results are presented as percentage by respondents based upon the number of responses for each question. The favorable outcomes which were defined as responses of either scale of 4 or 5 were also summarized according to dental settings. The χ² test for comparison was used to compare the favorable outcomes between the two settings.

A total of 601 completed questionnaires were collected; 394 from university/hospital-based dental clinics and 207 from two private clinics and a special (after office hour) clinic of a faculty of dentistry. Overall, the majority of respondents in both university/hospital-based and private practice settings felt that it is important to have a dentist conduct a screening (84.8 vs 79.5 percent). The majority of patients in both groups were willing to receive blood pressure examination (95.0 vs 92.0 percent), weight and height measurements (94.7 vs 94.0 percent), saliva/oral fluid investigation (86.4 and 86.9 percent) and finger-stick blood test (83.8 vs 83.9 percent). More than 75 percent of all respondents agreed with diabetes screening in dental clinics.

The majority of respondents supported the screening of DM in dental settings and they were willing to have a screening test by the dentist. Patient acceptance is an important key to be successful in the screening of DM in dental settings.

A midsize community hospital must choose a strategy to compete with an expanding regional rival. The strategy, focused on acquiring patient volume, includes expanding investment into integrated care, setting the reimbursement structure for revenue collection, and moving to a capitation-based payment system. The case presents an evaluation of revenue models to select that which best supports a given business strategy.

This case is designed to introduce a health care audience to financial analysis. It provides a straightforward introduction to hospital financial-statement ratio analysis and hospital operating statistics, so it can also serve to introduce any audience with a business or medical background to hospital finance.

Marketers agree that consumer complaints are useful sources of information that help marketers identify sources of dissatisfaction, and therefore should be encouraged. However, does complaining have a more direct beneficial effect? Can consumer complaining by itself cause increased satisfaction by allowing dissatisfied consumers a chance to vent their anger and frustration? An experiment was conducted on real consumers to test what effects complaining may have on changes in the consumers’ satisfaction and product evaluations over a one‐week period. It was found that consumers who were encouraged to complain reported greater increases in satisfaction and product evaluation compared to consumers who were not explicitly asked to complain. The changes in satisfaction and product evaluations were found to be related to the complaining intensity. The effect of complaining on actual purchasing behavior was also studied.

As one ages, the risk of experiencing a fall increases and poses a number of serious consequences; 30 per cent of individuals over 65 years of age fall each year. Evidence-based falls prevention programmes demonstrate efficacy in reducing the rate and risk of falls among older adults, but their use in Irish occupational therapy practice is unknown. This study aims to investigate the implementation of falls prevention programmes by occupational therapists working with older adults in Ireland.

A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data on the use of falls prevention programmes among occupational therapists working with older adults in any clinical setting across Ireland. Purposeful, convenience and snowball sampling methods were used. The Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland acted as a gatekeeper. Descriptive statistics and summative content analysis were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.

In all, 85 survey responses were analysed. Over 85 per cent of respondents reported “Never” using any of the evidence-based falls prevention programmes. The “OTAGO” Exercise Programme was the most “Frequently” used programme (9.5 per cent, n = 7); 29 respondents reported using “in-department” developed falls prevention programmes and 14 provided additional comments regarding current falls prevention practices in Ireland.

In the absence of Irish data on the subject, this study provides a benchmark to describe the use of evidence-based falls programmes by Irish occupational therapists with older adults.

There are longstanding concerns about the sustainability of the US health care system. Payment reform has been seen over the last decade as a key strategy to reorienting the US health care system around value. Alternative payment models (APMs) that seek to accomplish this goal have become increasingly prevalent in the US, yet there is a perception that physicians are resistant to their use and that organizations have been slow to adopt such models. The reasons for the limited effectiveness of APM programs are multifactorial and include aspects related to the design and implementation of these programs and lack of alignment and coordination across different payers and health care sectors. Most importantly, however, is that the current organizational structures in US health care serve to dampen the direct impact of these incentives, often because health care delivery organizations face conflicting incentives themselves. Organizations filter and refine the incentives from multiple external payment contracts and develop internal incentive systems that best reflect the amalgamation of the incentives embedded across their contracts, and thus the fragmented nature of the US health care system serves to undermine efforts to transform care under value-based contracts. In addition to organizations having conflicting incentives, there also are fundamental problems with the design and implementation of APMs that hinder their acceptance among physicians and the organizations in which they work. Moreover, much remains to be learned about how organizations can best adapt to succeed under these models, and how organizational culture can be leveraged to transform care.

Health-care professionals are caring for patients in unprecedented circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic, dealing with scarce resources, higher demand and uncertain outcomes. In this context, the purpose of this study is to explore the views of health-care professionals regarding their work conditions and perceived impacts of the pandemic on their health, as well as the role of resilience and improvisation in face of the new challenges.

This exploratory and qualitative study carried out semi-structured interviews with eleven health-care professionals from three Brazilian states that have been working in intensive care settings during the pandemic.

The pandemic has posed a great personal and professional burden on the professionals, impacting their physical and mental health. It also has required them greater resilience and improvisation capabilities to adequately perform work-related activities.

In addition to individual-level attitudes, the results suggest that aspects in the government, society, personal relationships and providers domains influence the effects of the pandemic on the health-care professionals and how they cope with the ongoing crisis. Such a multifactorial approach should therefore be considered by health managers.

With no similar effort identified, this study emphasizes the relevance of discussing the pandemic burden on frontline professionals and intends to be useful for health practitioners, managers, academics and policymakers.

Primary care (PC) is a strong determinant of overall health care. Children make up around a fifth of the population of the European Union and European Economic Area and have their own needs and uptake of PC. However, there is little research into how well PC services address their needs. There are large differences in childhood mortality and morbidity patterns in the EU and EEA countries, and there has been a major epidemiological shift in the past half century from predominantly communicable disease, to non-communicable diseases presenting and increasingly managed in PC. This increase in multifactorial morbidities, such as obesity and learning disability, has led to the need for PC systems to adapt to accommodate these changes. Europe presents a challenging picture of unexplained variation in health care delivery and style and of children’s different health experiences and health-related behaviour. The Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project aimed to describe the PC systems in detail, analyse their components and appraise them from a number of different viewpoints, including professional, public, political and economic lenses. It did this through nine work packages supported by a core management team, and a network of national agents, individuals in each MOCHA country who had the expertise in research and knowledge of their national health care system to answer a wide range of questions posed by the MOCHA scientific teams.

Mortality rates of cervical cancer are high amongst Filipino women; however, uptake of cervical screening is low. The purpose of this paper is to identify known barriers and facilitators to cervical screening for Filipino migrant women.

A systematic approach was adopted for the search, data extraction, critical appraisal and synthesis processes of this review. Eight electronic databases were searched. Studies published in peer review journals in English between 1995 and 2019 were reviewed.

In total, 20 relevant studies were identified. Studies were heterogeneous in design and focus and mostly conducted in the USA. A complex multifactorial picture of barriers to cervical screening was identified, which included: demographic, cognitive, access, health-care provider and cultural factors. None of the studies incorporated all factors.

This review demonstrates the complexity and multifactorial characteristic of cervical screening for Filipino migrant women. To increase uptake of screening, barriers to cervical screening for Filipino migrant women need to be fully understood. Future research should be conducted in different locations, focussing on multiple factors.

Aggregation of barriers and facilitators for Asian women combined tends to ignore cultural differences between groups. This review synthesises the existing but scarce literature to identify known barriers and facilitators to cervical screening for this specific population of Filipino migrant women.

All nursing students have the opportunity to gain experience in the Independent Sector. The Health and Social Care Act (2012) in the UK has led to more health services being provided by the Independent Sector. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of first year student nurses of their learning experience in nursing homes placements within the Independent Sector.

Two focus groups were undertaken with first year student nurses, one with six students and the other with seven students. All students had completed four week clinical placements in nursing homes. The focus groups were semi structured. Thematic analysis was undertaken on the data.

Important themes that emerged from the data included: leadership issues, poor practice relating to infection control and manual handling, team dynamics, commitment to addressing issues when raised and challenges to raising issues within the placement area. The findings provided an insight into some of the barriers for student nurses when raising issues. The decision to raise concerns was multifactorial and complex. Attention was also focused on the relationship between the mentor and the student and the impact that can have on the learning environment.

The limitations for this study included: this was a small scale study, the findings were from a small number of placement areas within a small geographical area of the UK. Some students may have felt reluctant to share their views in a focus group. The findings reflect the views of first year student nurses only. However, first year students can provide an alternative view of a placement area. Their lack of experience can be an opportunity to question accepted norms with the mentor, acting as a resource of new ideas.

This paper identified opportunities and challenges for student nurses and education providers alike. For the student it was the complexities of raising issues and for the education provider it was equipping students with the knowledge and skills to raise such issues not only as a student but also upon qualification.