BACKGROUND Increasing attention to patients' rights and their ability to choose their healthcare provider have changed the way patients can respond to untoward, disempowering and abusive healthcare encounters. These responses are often seen as crucial for quality improvement, yet they are little explored and conceptualized. OBJECTIVE To explore patients' potential responses to untoward health...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to underline the importance of taking work practices into account for quality improvement (QI) purposes, highlight some of the challenges of doing so, and suggest strategies for future research and practice. Patient status at a glance, a Lean-inspired QI intervention designed to alleviate nurses of their knowledge mobilisation function, is deployed as an i...

BACKGROUND The quality and context of end-of-life care for children are not as well studied as they are for adults. The components of quality care are less clear, and differences between providers' perception of the quality of death are also not well understood. OBJECTIVE To compare nurse and physician perceptions of the quality of care and events of death of the same children. DESIGN Self-...

background: world health organization (who) defines three goals to assess the performance of a health system: the state of health, fairness in financial contribution and responsiveness. we assessed the responsiveness of health system for patients with diabetes in a defined population cohort in tehran, iran. methods: total responsiveness and eight domains (prompt attention, dignity, communicatio...

recent disclosures of failures of care in the national health service (nhs) in england have led to debates about compassion deficits disallowing health professionals to provide high quality responsive care. while the link between high quality care and compassion is often taken for granted, it is less obvious how compassion – often originating in the individual’s emotional response – can become ...

this paper represents a commentary to marianna fotaki’s editorial: ‘why and how is compassion necessary to provide good quality healthcare?’ within this commentary, i discuss some of the issues raised by marianna fotaki, and conclude that we should work towards an organizational culture which considers the important concept of compassion by focusing on the well-being and teamwork of all involved.

‘whistleblowing’ has come to increased prominence in many health systems as a means of identifying and addressing quality and safety issues. but whistleblowing – and the reactions to it – have many complex and ambiguous aspects that need to be considered as part of the broader (organisational) cultural dynamics of healthcare institutions.