Investigating the Potential Contribution of Patient Rating Sites to Hospital Supervision: Exploratory Results From an Interview Study in the Netherlands.

Background: Over the last decades, the patient perspective on health care quality has been unconditionally integrated into quality management. For several years now, patient rating sites have been rapidly gaining attention. These offer a new approach toward hearing the patient's perspective on the quality of health care.

E-consulting in a medical specialist setting: Medicine of the future?

Objective: Today's technology provides new ways of consulting between patients and medical specialists in health care, such as videoconferencing and web-messaging. In this systematic review we assessed the effects of e-consulting between medical specialists and patients.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Psychlit and Cochrane Library for randomized clinical trials assessing the use of e-consulting methods (videoconferencing (VC) or web-messaging (WM)), as compared to conventional care (face-to-face (FF) or telephone consultations (TC)) in a medical specialist setting.

Trends in patient satisfaction in Dutch university medical centers: room for improvement for all.

Background: Results of patient satisfaction research provide hospitals areas for quality improvement. Although it may take several years to achieve such improvement, not all hospitals analyze changes in patient satisfaction over time structurally. Consequently, they lack information from patients' perspective on effectiveness of improvement programs.

Do radiation oncologists tailor information to patients needs? And, if so, does it affect patients?

Background: Our study aims to investigate whether information given by radiation oncologists to their patients is tailored to the patient's desired level of information and, if so, what the effect of tailoring is on patient-reported outcomes, i.e. satisfaction, health, anxiety and self-efficacy.

Do patients' information needs decrease over the course of radiotherapy?

Purpose: We aimed to investigate if cancer patients' information needs decrease during radiotherapy and if so, which patient, consultation and radiation oncologist characteristics are associated with a decrease in information needs over time.

Methods: In this longitudinal study, patients (n = 104) completed a baseline questionnaire a week before the initial radiotherapy consultation, immediately following this initial consultation, and 1 week prior to the first follow-up visit, which took place on average 3-5 weeks after the initial visit. Besides information needs, measured by the Information Preference for Radiotherapy Patients scale, the questionnaire assessed patient, consultation and radiation oncologist characteristics.

Further validation of the 5-item Perceived Efficacy in Patient-Physician Interactions (PEPPI-5) scale in patients with osteoarthritis.

Objective: To examine the structural validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity of the 5-item Perceived Efficacy in Patient-Physician Interactions (PEPPI-5) scale in patients with osteoarthritis (OA).

Methods: A cross-sectional sample of 224 outpatients with OA completed a survey containing the Dutch PEPPI-5 and other standardized measures assessing perceived health-management skills, general self-efficacy, social support, and health-related quality of life. A subsample of 100 patients completed the PEPPI-5 again approximately 3 weeks later.

Assessment of physician competency in patient education: reliability and validity of a model-based instrument.

Objective: Establish the inter-rater reliability and the concept, convergent and construct validity of an instrument for assessing the competency of physicians in patient education.

Methods: Three raters assessed the quality of patient education in 30 outpatient consultations with the CELI instrument. This instrument is based on a goal-directed model of patient education and assesses distinctive skills for patient education categorized in four subcompetencies.

The information needs of new radiotherapy patients: how to measure? Do they want to know everything? And if not, why?

Purpose: To establish 1) further psychometric properties of the information preference for radiotherapy patients scale (IPRP); 2) what information new radiotherapy patients want to receive; 3) which patients have a lower information need.

Methods And Materials: Eligible patients (n = 159; response rate 54%) of 15 radiation oncologists completed the IPRP and provided background characteristics before their first radiotherapy consultation. Exclusion criteria were: age <18 years, having undergone radiotherapy before, unable to read and write Dutch, cognitive problems or a brain tumor.

Measuring cancer patients' reasons for their information preference: construction of the Considerations Concerning Cancer Information (CCCI) questionnaire.

Objectives: This paper describes the further development and psychometric properties of an instrument to measure cancer patients' reasons to want complete or limited information: the Considerations Concerning Cancer Information questionnaire (CCCI). Understanding cancer patients' reasons to want complete or limited information will provide the physician with information that enables him or her to tailor information giving.

Methods: CCCI's content validity, internal structure, and convergent validity were investigated among 145 cancer patients, new to radiotherapy.

Medical specialists' patient-centered communication and patient-reported outcomes.

Background: Physicians' patient-centered communication in the medical consultation is generally expected to improve patient outcomes. However, empirical evidence is contradictory so far, and most studies were done in primary care.

Objective: We sought to determine the association of specialists' patient-centered communication with patient satisfaction, adherence, and health status.

Patient participation in the medical specialist encounter: does physicians' patient-centred communication matter?

Objective: Physicians' patient-centred communication is assumed to stimulate patients' active participation, thus leading to more effective and humane exchange in the medical consultation. We investigated the relationship between physicians' patient-centred communication and patient participation in a medical specialist setting.

Methods: Participants were 30 residents and specialists in internal medicine, and 323 of their patients.

Determinants of physicians' patient-centred behaviour in the medical specialist encounter.

It has been suggested that patient-centred communication does not necessarily translate into a 'one-size fits all' approach, but rather that physicians should use a flexible style and adapt to the particular needs of their patients. This paper examines variability in physicians' patient-centred behaviour in medical specialist encounters, and determines whether patient, visit, and physician characteristics influence this variability. Participants were 30 residents and specialists in internal medicine at an academic teaching hospital in The Netherlands, and 323 patients having a (videotaped) outpatient follow-up appointment.

Coding patient-centred behaviour in the medical encounter.

A patient-centred approach is increasingly advocated and incorporated in medical education. Due to its multi-dimensionality, however, the concept of patient-centredness appears to be hard to measure and, consequently, to evaluate. The objective of this study was to develop an instrument to measure patient-centredness in line with one central dimension, i.

Satisfaction with the outpatient encounter: a comparison of patients' and physicians' views.

Objective: To compare patients' and physicians' visit-specific satisfaction in an internal medicine outpatient setting, and to explain their respective views.

Design: Patients' and physicians' background characteristics were assessed prior to outpatient encounters. Immediately after the encounter, both patients and physicians completed a questionnaire assessing satisfaction with the visit.