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The Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure is a validated tool for assessing the patients' perception of the doctors' communication in primary care. The present study aims to evaluate the potential usefulness of the CARE Measure in secondary care in a single Hospital Trust in Scotland.

A total of 1,015 out‐patients attending 25 consultants across ten specialities anonymously completed the questionnaire immediately after their appointment. Overall satisfaction, estimated consultation length, satisfaction with consultation length, and demographic and socio‐economic variables were also recorded.

The number of missing values and “not applicable” responses to the ten CARE Measure items was extremely low (3.4 per cent). Almost 90 per cent of patients felt the CARE Measure items were of major importance. The measure had a high internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.94) and reduced to a single factor. Overall CARE Measure score correlated with overall satisfaction (r=0.7, p<0.0001), whether patients would recommend the doctor (r=0.6, p<0.0001), and satisfaction with consultation length (r=0.6, p<0.0001). Multi‐regression analysis showed that personal continuity of care, consultation length, and patient age positively influenced CARE Measure score, but the effect size was small. Patients' gender, marital status, general health, and socio‐economic factors did not influence scores. Reliability analysis indicated that 40 patients were required per doctor in order to achieve an overall reliability co‐efficient of above 0.7.

Secondary care patients across a range of specialities have endorsed the CARE Measure as a relevant tool. It has high face and concurrent validity, internal and structural reliability and is not subject to major influences by demographic or socio‐economic factors. These findings support the feasibility and reliability of the CARE Measure in secondary care.

This pilot study indicates that the CARE Measure is considered by most patients to be of high relevance to everyday out‐patient consultations in secondary care.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the relevance and reliability of the ten‐item Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure as a tool for measuring patients' views of anaesthetists during preoperative assessment consultations.

Self‐completed patient questionnaire containing the ten‐item CARE Measure. Consecutive adult patients were asked to complete the ten‐item CARE questionnaire immediately after their pre‐operative assessment consultation with the anaesthetist and return it to a designated local co‐ordinator. Reliability co‐efficient of the overall measure, and relevance of each item to patients' concerns were measured.

Using the Measure, 31 consultant anaesthetists were assessed by 1,582 patients (559 male, 952 female). The total number of “not applicable” responses was 1,086, (6.8 per cent of the total number of possible “not applicable” responses). The overall number of missing values was 0.6 per cent. The measure effectively discriminated between doctors (reliability co‐efficient of the average score per doctor provided by 40 patients was above 0.8) and had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, 0.93).

The present study presents evidence of a tool which may have utility in anaesthetics and other settings.

The medical consultation is one of the requirements in diseases diagnosis and patient treatment. In addition, a high-quality consultation is a fundamental demand of patients, and it is one of the rights of every patient. The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting the high-quality consultation in medical communications.

The following electronic databases were searched: MEDLINE (via PubMed), Web of Science, Cochrane, EMBASE, Scopus and ProQuest until December 2018. In addition, the authors searched Google Scholar. Qualitative and quantitative studies were assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, Qualitative Checklist and the Center for Evidence-Based Management appraisal checklist, respectively. A stepwise approach was conducted for data synthesis.

Of 3,826 identified studies, 29 met the full inclusion criteria. Overall, after quality assessment of studies, 25 studies were included. The studies were conducted in the USA (n=6), the UK (n=6), the Netherlands (n=4), Canada (n=2), Belgium (n=2), Poland (n=2), Germany (n=1), Iran (n=1), Finland (n=1), Austria (n=1), Qatar (n=1), Denmark (n=1) and China (n=1), and five studies were excluded. Data synthesis showed that high-quality consultation consisted of three main categories: structural (4 main themes with 26 sub-themes), process (2 main themes with 33 sub-themes) and outcome (3 main themes with 12 sub-themes) quality.

Using the indicators of consultation quality improvement can develop physicians’ clinical competence and skills. Decision makers can use them to monitor and evaluate physicians’ performance. A high-quality consultation can be useful in social prescribing that helps patients to manage their disease.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) has been recognized as a “gold standard” set of “practical standardized measures” for assessing hospital service quality. Beginning with the HCAHPS, the purpose of this paper is to extend efforts to assess patient-centered communication (PCC) and the quality of healthcare and presents a scale for measuring patient perceptions and expectations of service quality in an emerging economy context.

A self-administered survey of patients in private hospitals (N = 171) was conducted to test the proposed framework. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to establish the measurement model. Multiple regression analysis was used to explain the scale's predictive ability. ANOVA was used to analyze service quality gaps and rank patients' priorities.

Five components of PCC are identified. Among these, nurse affective communication has a significant positive effect on patient satisfaction. The gap analysis shows that patients have high expectations for doctors' affective communication, while they perceive a low level of service performance in the realm of nurse affective communication. The study highlights a new means of measuring “reliability” in healthcare. Important findings on patients' priorities are evaluated and discussed.

Healthcare organizations and practitioners can improve patient-centered care by stressing the dimensions of PCC, including clinicians' affective and instrumental communication.

The study expands the understanding of HCAHPS instruments in an emerging economy context and opens avenues for more widespread use of the measures. The research contributes to the literature on patient-centered care and healthcare service quality by proposing a scale for managing specific practices and interactions in healthcare.

The purpose of the paper is to explore how the national, state and organisational health policies in Australia support the implementation of person-centred care in managing chronic care conditions.

A qualitative content analysis was performed regarding the national, state and organisational Queensland Health policies using Elo and Kyngas' (2008) framework.

Although the person-centred care as an approach is well articulated in health policies, there is still no definitive measure or approach to embedding it into operational services. Complex funding structures and competing priorities of the governments and the health organisations carry the risk that person-centred care as an approach gets lost in translation. Three themes emerged: the patient versus the government; health care delivery versus the political agenda; and health care organisational processes versus the patient.

Given that person-centred care is the recommended approach for responding to chronic health conditions, further empirical research is required to evaluate how programs designed to deliver person-centred care achieve that objective in practice.

This research highlights the complex environment in which the person-centred approach is implemented. Short-term programmes created specifically to focus on person-centred care require the right organisational infrastructure, support and direction. This review demonstrates the need for alignment of policies related to chronic disease management at the broader organisational level.

Given the introduction of the nurse navigator program to take up a person-centred care approach, the review of the recent policies was undertaken to understand how they support this initiative.

Social prescribing is a model of integrated care, in which primary healthcare staff can link patients to the social care sector. However, social prescribing can occur in different forms. To better understand the concept of social prescribing, this literature review examines the role of the link workers, activities and target groups.

A literature review was conducted. Studies before May 2020 were considered. In total, 1,700 studies were identified using the databases Pubmed, PsycInfo, Cinahl, Web of Science and Cochrane Library. After eligibility checks, 16 studies were included in the final analysis.

A few studies warned of a deeper engagement of the link worker due to service dependency, but most studies encouraged an active and supportive role of the link worker. Participants engaged in social, physical and counseling activities. The majority of studies emphasized the importance of linking group activities with personal preferences and identity needs. The main target groups were composed of individuals with psychosocial needs, but some studies also included patients with physical or mental illnesses.

Social prescribing is widely advocated as an innovative model of integrated care. However, few studies have looked into the complex system of social prescribing. This study analyzes the linking processes, activities and target groups in extant social prescribing programs.

For leadership and management of Western health systems, good quality relationships are a fundamental cornerstone of organising health and social care (H&SC) delivery, delivering benefits across organisations and communities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extant management, H&SC literature, grounded in older people care, reveal behaviours, processes and practices that if readily identified across a context will support healthy relationships across the “whole system” of stakeholders.

An academic/practitioner group designed and guided a scoping literature review of the H&SC and broader management literature to identify and extract important behaviours, processes and practices underlying the support of high-quality relationships. A search strategy was agreed and key health and management databases were interrogated and 51 papers selected for inclusion. Working with the practitioners, the selected papers were coded and then organised into emergent themes.

The paper outlines the relational behaviours, processes and practice elements that should be present within an older peoples care community, to support a healthy relational environment. These elements are presented under the five emergent literature themes of integrity, compassion, respect, fairness and trust. These five topics are examined in detail. A way forward for building statements using the review material, that may be applied to reveal relational patterns within older people care, is also explored and outlined.

All literature reviews are subject to practical decisions around time, budget, scope and depth restraints. Therefore potentially relevant papers may have been missed in the review process. The scoping review process adapted here does not seek to make any major considerations with regards to the weighting of evidence behind the primary research.

This paper contributes to a growing need for designers of health systems to more fully understand, measure and draw on the value of relationships to help bridge the gap between diminishing resources and the expanding demand on H&SC services.

Social prescribing (SP) is an emerging area of public health that has the potential to alleviate pressure on primary care by offering non-clinical solutions to health problems. Whilst there is an increasing body of literature exploring service design and impact, there is little research that focuses specifically on the SP workforce. The purpose of this paper is to explore routes into SP, worker’s experiences of the sector and potential career progression.

For this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight members of the SP workforce with varying levels of responsibility from within six different organisations in an urban/suburban area of South West England. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.

Pathways into the sector were varied, and those without direct experience often brought transferable skills from other professions. Careers in SP were clearly rewarding, and some providers had established good support structures for staff. However, some participants were in need of additional training in areas such as collaborative working and staff management. Staff working at a more senior level – particularly in community-based organisations – seemed less well supported overall, with limited career progression. Staff in such organisations also reported working beyond contractual hours.

This study has revealed inconsistencies between the experiences of staff in some community organisations vs those associated with larger, more established services. It has also highlighted a need for further training and capacity building in some areas. These findings may be of interest to those commissioning or funding SP services in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of patient participation on patient satisfaction and the subsequent effect on patient behavior outcomes

The research employs self-administered survey method to test hypotheses. The convenience sampling approach is used to collected data from 410 patients in metropolitan cities of India. The data are analyzed using SmartPLS to test the proposed model.

The results shows patient participation is positively related to behaviour outcomes and patient confidence and satisfaction mediate the effect of patient participation on adherence.

The study was limited to a small sample which may somewhat limit generalization of the findings. However, the findings, based on primary data, are insightful. Second, the current study was cross-sectional in nature, whereas a longitudinal study could had measured changes in perceptions over an extended time period.

The results provide interesting insights about the significance of patient participation in positive behavior outcome. These insights will enable health care professionals and government to formulate a suitable policy through which to encourage patient participation in health treatment regimes.

The paper demonstrates the influence of patient participation on behavior. There has been little research on this aspect in the Indian context to date, so this study offers an important guideline to the health care industry in relation to introducing customer empowerment into health care regimes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficiency levels of the decision‐making units within the public hospital laboratories in using their supply chain towards meeting the satisfaction of doctors.

Data were collected from two senior laboratory administrators and 30 doctors of two hospital laboratories in Malaysia using two sets of structured questionnaires, which comprised of two dimensions, i.e. doctor satisfaction dimension (DSD) and supply chain inputs (SCI). The dimensions of DSD and SCI were developed and that SCI has been relabeled as hospital laboratory inputs (HLI) to suit the nature of current study. The resulting data were positioned on an importance‐performance matrix. By using the data envelopment analysis software, the efficient frontier for both hospital laboratories was calculated under different scenarios.

Results reveal that one of the laboratories satisfies doctors efficiently using the present levels of HLI for each scenario while the other failed.

The paper focuses only on two hospital laboratories.

The findings offer insights on the important dimensions of DSD and HLI that the hospital laboratories should concentrate on when measuring doctor satisfaction through the utilization of resources they possess. This will undoubtedly lead to better hospital‐doctor‐patient relationships.

Many prior supply chain studies have focused on patient satisfaction. This paper is probably one of the first attempts that comprehensively examines satisfaction from the perspective of doctors.