the ones I most often use, but when I’m conscious of a consultation going wrong, the problem usually lies deeper. You only have to ask: ‘Do I give patients who irritate me a worse deal?’ to appreciate the importance of attitudes in human communication. But do attitudes determine skills, or can attitudes be forged by attention to skills? It’s an ancient debate, neatly articulated by Skelton. Inn...

Attitudes toward sexuality are a key variable for sexual health. It is really important for psychology and education to have adapted and validated questionnaires to evaluate these attitudes. Therefore, the objective of this research was to adapt, validate and calculate the equivalence of the Colombia Sexual Opinion Survey as compared to the same survey from Spain. To this end, a total of eight ...

BACKGROUND New information and communication technologies such as email and text messaging have been shown to be useful in some aspects of primary care service delivery. Little is known about Scottish GPs' attitudes towards the adoption of these technologies as routine consultation tools. OBJECTIVES To explore GPs' perceptions of the potential place of new non-face-to-face consultation techno...

BACKGROUND Studies of HIV often use self-reported surveys to measure sexual knowledge, attitudes, and practices. However, the self-reported data are vulnerable to social desirability (SD), a propensity of individuals to report favorable responses. The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC-SDS) was developed as a measure of the effect of social desirability, but it has not been adapted fo...

OBJECTIVES To identify general practitioners' views on the barriers to using case conferencing (as outlined in the Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) Enhanced Primary Care package) and to develop a set of principles to encourage greater GP participation in case conferences. DESIGN Qualitative study, involving semistructured questions administered to focus groups of GPs, conducted between April a...

IN May andi June of last year I was one of those nominated to represent the Royal Victoria Hospital on a visit to some European hospitals. Ihe delegation, which consisted of members of the Board of Management and of the Visiting Staff of the hospital, had been instructed by the Board to enquire into hospital conditions abroad so that the plans under consideration for our own future buildling op...

CONTEXT Children's cough is a daily concern for most pediatricians. The management of both acute and chronic cough requires a systematic and comprehensive approach. Despite the approved protocols for management, the pediatric assessment of cough and the corresponding prescribing attitude frequently do not fit these protocols, which can be affected by parental suggestions - sometimes substantial...

Nurses, particularly those working in non-psychiatric settings, report that they do not feel adequately prepared to meet the mental health needs of patients. The psychiatric consultation-liaison nursing role has arisen in part, as a response to these difficulties and aims to facilitate access to mental health nursing expertise for general hospital patients and staff. The impact of the introduct...

Background and Aim: Marriage and establishing a family is one of the most important events of everyone's life which has significant effects on personal and social health if it occurs appropriately and is intertwined with enough knowledge. To reach these positive effects, pre-marriage consultation is taken into consideration and it is accurately planned. Under such an instructional program, coup...

BACKGROUND Patients' perceptions of care is an important factor in evaluation of health care, in quality assessment, and in improvement efforts. Expectations of assessments or procedures such as surgery have been found to be related to perceptions of outcome as well as satisfaction, and are therefore of interest to both clinicians and researchers. Increased understanding of these patient views ...