Social service counseling in cancer centers certified by the German Cancer Society.

Social workers are an integral part of care provided in cancer centers that are certified according to the requirements of the German Cancer Society. This article reports on the tasks of social workers in German cancer care and on the proportion of patients that receives social service counseling (SSC) in breast, lung, colorectal, skin, gynecological, prostate, pancreas, neurological, and head and neck cancer centers based on data from 367,297 patients treated between 2009 and 2012. The highest proportions of patients (median >75%) are provided with SSC in breast and colorectal cancer centers, whereas the median is below 30% in skin cancer centers.

Complaints as indicators of health care shortcomings: which groups of patients are affected?

Objective: Patient complaints about the health care system and medical services are regarded as indicators of shortcomings in health care systems. This article examines the topics of complaint raised most frequently and analyzes which groups of persons were most affected.

Design: Quantitative content analysis using a category system.

[Are complaints an element for health-care monitoring? Analysis of the user statistics of the federal commissioner for patient issues between 2004 and 2007].

Background: The inclusion of patient perceptions in the assessment of health-care quality has gained in importance in recent years. The main instruments applied for this purpose are different types of patient interviews. Complaint data have rarely been used thus far.

Structural adaptability of zinc binding sites: different structures in partially, fully, and heavy-metal loaded states.

The present study demonstrates that both the nature (Zn(II), Cd(II) or Hg(II)) and supply of metal ions determine whether zinc fingers fold into the well-known, fully loaded structures or alternatively populate a variety of structural states under substoichiometric conditions. Metal-bridged species are observed by perturbed angular correlation (PAC), EXAFS, UV spectroscopy, and stopped-flow kinetics. Transitions between structural states as adaptive reactions to changed metal-ion supply might represent intelligent system changes in zinc homeostasis, trafficking and signalling, and reflect features of heavy-metal toxicity at the molecular level.