Provider Perspectives on Safety in Primary Care in Albania.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the safety attitudes of specialist physicians (SPs), general physicians (GPs), and nurses in primary care in Albania.

Design: The study was cross-sectional. It involved the SPs, GPs, and nurses from five districts in Albania.

A pilot study evaluating the use of ABCD2 score in pre-hospital assessment of patients with suspected transient ischaemic attack: experience and lessons learned.

Background: Suspected transient ischaemic attack (TIA) is a common presentation to emergency medical services (EMS) in the United Kingdom (UK). Several EMS systems have adopted the ABCD2 score to aid pre-hospital risk stratification and decision-making on patient disposition, such as direct referral to an Emergency Department or specialist TIA clinic. However, the ABCD2 score, developed for hospital use, has not been validated for use in the pre-hospital context of EMS care.

Supporting staff to respond effectively to informal complaints: findings from an action research study.

Aim And Objective: To understand how nurses and midwives manage informal complaints at ward level.

Background: The provision of high quality, compassionate clinical nursing and midwifery is a global priority. Complaints management systems have been established within the National Health Service in the UK to improve patient experience yet little is known about effective responses to informal complaints in clinical practice by nurses and midwives.

Gatekeeping access to the midwifery unit: Managing complaints by bending the rules.

While poor communication between service users and front-line staff causes many service user complaints in the British National Health Service, staff rarely reflect on the causes of these complaints. We discuss findings from an action research project with midwives which suggest that the midwives struggled to fully understand complaints from women, their partners and families particularly about restricted visiting and the locked door to the midwifery unit. They responded to individual requests to visit out of hours while maintaining the general policy of restricted visiting.

The acceptability of e-technology to monitor and assess patient symptoms following palliative radiotherapy for lung cancer.

E-technology is increasingly used in oncology to obtain self-reported symptom assessment information from patients, although its potential to provide a clinical monitoring tool in palliative care is relatively unexplored in the UK. This study aimed to evaluate the support provided to lung cancer patients post palliative radiotherapy using a computerized assessment tool and to determine the clinical acceptability of the tool in a palliative care setting. However, of the 17 clinicians identified as managing patients who met the initial eligibility criteria for the study, only one clinician gave approval for their patient to be contacted regarding participation, therefore the benefits of this novel technology could not be assessed.

Laparoscopic surgery for endometrial cancer: a phenomenological study.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study of women's perspectives on the experience of laparoscopic surgery for endometrial cancer.

Background: Laparoscopic surgery is increasingly used to treat early endometrial cancer. It is associated with low levels of morbidity and is considered safe as cancer surgery, but research on quality of life and women's experiences is limited.

Why are some care homes better than others? An empirical study of the factors associated with quality of care for older people in residential homes in Surrey, England.

This paper reports an empirical study that investigated associations between the quality of care received by older people in residential settings and features of the care homes in which they live. Data were gathered from the first announced inspection reports (2002-2003) of all 258 care homes for older people in one county of England (Surrey). The number of inspected standards failed in each home was used as the main indicator of quality of care.

Nurse led telephone follow up in ovarian cancer: a psychosocial perspective.

Survivorship is a relatively new concept in ovarian cancer due to improvements in diagnosis, surgery and chemotherapy. As more women require long term follow up for ovarian cancer the pressure on these services is increased and the question of how best to care for these women needs to be addressed. This paper considers the results of a pilot study of nurse led telephone follow up in ovarian cancer from a psychosocial perspective.