Staff's normative attitudes towards coercion: the role of moral doubt and professional context-a cross-sectional survey study.

Background: The use of coercion is morally problematic and requires an ongoing critical reflection. We wondered if not knowing or being uncertain whether coercion is morally right or justified (i.e.

Is imperfection becoming easier to live with for doctors?

Objective: Being involved in serious patient injury is devastating for most doctors. During the last two decades, several efforts have been launched to improve Norwegian doctors' coping with adverse events and complaints.

Methods: The method involved survey to a representative sample of 1792 Norwegian doctors in 2012.

The Norwegian National Council for Priority Setting in Health Care: decisions and justifications.

Different countries have adopted different strategies for tackling the challenge of allocating scarce health care resources fairly. Norway is one of the countries that has pioneered the effort to resolve priority setting by using a core set of priority-setting criteria. While the criteria themselves have been subject to extensive debate and numerous revisions, the question of how the criteria have been applied in practice has received less attention.

Peer counselling for doctors in Norway: A qualitative study of the relationship between support and surveillance.

Rationale: Peer support can entail collegial responsibility for counselling and support as well as reactions to academic or ethical failure. These considerations can be complementary, but also conflicting.

Objective: This article focuses on how the peer support programme in Norway addresses these considerations.

Decisions on statin therapy by patients' opinions about survival gains: cross sectional survey of general practitioners.

Background: Guidelines for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease provide little guidance on how patients' preferences should be taken into account. We wanted to explore whether general practitioners (GPs) are sensitive to patient preferences regarding survival gains from statin therapy.

Methods: In a cross sectional, online survey 3,270 Norwegian GPs were presented with a 55 year old patient with an unfavourable cardiovascular risk profile.

Weekly working hours for Norwegian hospital doctors since 1994 with special attention to postgraduate training, work-home balance and the European working time directive: a panel study.

Objectives: To examine the weekly working hours of Norwegian hospital doctors from 1994 to 2012 with special emphasis on the quality of postgraduate training and work-home balance, and in relation to the requirements of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD).

Design: Panel study based on postal questionnaires.

Setting: Norway.

Cross-national comparison of job satisfaction in doctors during economic recession.

Background: Job satisfaction in doctors is related to migration, burnout, turnover and health service quality. However, little is known about their job satisfaction during economic recessions. Iceland and Norway have similar health care systems, but only Iceland was affected severely by the 2008 economic crisis.

Differences in sickness absence between self-employed and employed doctors: a cross-sectional study on national sample of Norwegian doctors in 2010.

Background: Doctors have a low prevalence of sickness absence. Employment status is a determinant in the multifactorial background of sickness absence. The effect of doctors' employment status on sickness absence is unexplored.

Commercialism, holism, and individual responsibility comment on "buying health: the costs of commercialism and an alternative philosophy".

Churchill and Churchill's editorial discusses negative (health) effects of commercialism in the provision of health care and nutrition. Three parts of their argument are commented: the claim that the fundamental problem of markets is the decomposition of the whole into parts ("reductionism"); the call for individual responsibility; and the notion of holism. On the three aspects the commentary concludes thus: Because provision of health and food must be controlled and managed in some form, an alternative to some kind of decomposition is hard to see.