What the doctor doesn't know: Discarded patient knowledge of older adults with multimorbidity.

Objectives: Adherence to treatment has proven to require the involvement of patients in treatment and care planning. This process involves incorporating patient knowledge, or knowledge about the patients' everyday life, into the clinical encounter. This article explores the disclosure practices of such knowledge from older adults with multimorbidity.

[Involvement of patients has not been fully implemented in Danish health care].

In Denmark, there is a focus on patient involvement. Health professionals want to involve patients, but have diverse interpretations of what this entails, which complicates knowledge dissemination. Interventions are scattered and diverse, and often do not systematically involve patients' knowledge.

[User involvement in the Danish health care sector].

The aim of the health services is to ensure an optimal result for its users. It is documented that involvement has a positive impact on treatment, and in many respects patients take another view on the concept of quality than does health personnel. In Denmark every fifth patient experiences insufficient involvement in his or her own course of treatment - furthermore, the patient perspective is given insufficient attention and there is a general lack of user representation and user surveys in the processes shaping the organization of the health services and cultural issues.

Do surgical patients differ in the way they prioritise aspects of hospital care?

Main Objective: To investigate whether surgical patients have the same or different priorities within hospital care by examining whether the importance patients ascribe to different aspects of hospital care can be explained by how important they find aspects of hospitalization in general.

Background: Few studies have investigated patient priorities within hospital care. Knowledge of patient priorities is important for the purpose of making quality improvements in hospital care.

[Conditions for foreign doctors' clinical work assessed by Danish health care personnel, patients and foreign doctors].

Introduction: Many foreign doctors work in Danish hospitals. This study concerns the opportunities available to and difficulties encountered by these doctors.

Materials And Methods: A questionnaire concerning guidance available to foreign doctors, their linguistic and professional competence and their cultural backgrounds was sent to foreign doctors, to Danish doctors, to Danish nurses, and to patients in Greater Copenhagen.

The NORPEQ patient experiences questionnaire: data quality, internal consistency and validity following a Norwegian inpatient survey.

Aims: This article describes the development of a questionnaire designed for comparisons of patient experiences of hospital care within the Nordic countries. The results of testing for data quality, reliability, and validity are presented following a Norwegian survey.

Methods: Following a literature review and consultation within an expert group six items were developed measuring patient experiences together with two items assessing global satisfaction and perception of incorrect treatment.

How do patients with colorectal cancer perceive treatment and care compared with the treating health care professionals?

Background: Patient evaluations are widely used in quality assessment of health services. It is widely recognized that patients and professionals provide a different perspective on quality. However, the extent to which they differ and the conceptual areas in which they differ is not well understood.

[Are Danish medical students concerned about their future job? A questionnaire study].

Introduction: Knowledge about the thoughts of Danish medical students regarding their job future is limited. The aim of this study was to investigate whether medical students are concerned about their future work, and if so, to describe the types of concerns they have, to what degree they are concerned, possible reasons for and consequences of their concerns; furthermore, to evaluate if gender and semester influate on the concerns.

Method: A questionnaire was developed based on focus group interviews with medical students.

[The attitude of doctors and nurses towards reporting and handling errors and adverse events].

Introduction: Few studies have been published about the attitudes of doctors and nurses towards reporting and handling adverse events. However, knowledge about staff attitudes is relevant and may be essential to dealing with potential problems and barriers that staff might have, as well as to supporting cultural change in relation to reporting and learning.

Materials And Methods: From February to March 2002, a questionnaire comprising 133 questions was distributed to 4019 doctors and nurses in four counties in Denmark.

[Clinical leaders' and staff's assessment of the current quality related to the patient pathways and expectations of and knowledge about accreditation--a baseline evaluation in Copenhagen County].

Introduction: In the preparation for accreditation in Copenhagen County the commitment of clinical leaders and staff members is crucial. The objectives of these surveys are to examine the leaders' and the staff's assessment of quality improvement and their expectations and knowledge about accreditation, as well as the staff's advice concerning the further planning.

Materials And Methods: Two surveys among clinical leaders and staff members were carried out.

[Patients' experiences--indications for treatment quality in breast cancer surgery].

Introduction: After the establishment of a centralised unit for the surgical treatment of breast cancer in the county of Copenhagen, Denmark, a number of parameters concerning the quality of patients' in-hospital stay were established. A survey of patients' experiences was done via a questionnaire in which they described their satisfaction level.

Materials And Methods: Two questionnaires including 43 questions were sent to 400 women recently operated on for primary breast cancer.

[Patients' attitude towards the hospital system in eastern and western Denmark. Patient involvement, patient orthodoxy and information gathering].

Introduction: Based on results from the Danish National Patient Satisfaction Survey (2000, 2002), which showed that patients treated in hospitals in western Denmark (West) had more positive experiences than patients treated in hospitals in eastern Denmark (East), the Unit of Patient Evaluation examined what factors may be creating the regional differences in patients' experiences.

Materials And Methods: This research is based on qualitative research methods and has decoded the sense ascribed by each patient, based on his or her own understanding, norms and values, to phenomena and experiences during hospitalisation. The research was carried out in four orthopaedic departments, and hip patients were chosen as the target group.

[Patient-experienced quality assessed in two national surveys].

Introduction: Surveys of patients' experiences can be used for other purposes than to disclose patients' overall satisfaction. They can, for example, also be used to select focus areas in the health care sector. In this article two large national surveys of patient-experienced quality are compared.