BACKGROUND Centralizing specialist cancer surgery services aims to reduce variations in quality of care and improve patient outcomes, but increases travel demands on patients and families. This study aimed to evaluate preferences of patients, health professionals and members of the public for the characteristics associated with centralization. METHODS A discrete-choice experiment was conducte...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND This study explores with patients, carers and health care professionals if, when and how Advance Care Planning conversations about patients' preferences for place of care (and death) were facilitated and documented. METHODS The study adopted an exploratory case study design using qualitative interviews, across five services delivering palliative care to cancer and non...

T he 2008 annual Math Awareness Month theme features the unusual combination of “Mathematics and Voting”. The importance of voting is obvious; indeed, with the United States election season hard upon us, discussions about voting are seemingly nonstop. More generally, on almost any day of any year the news media reports on some consequential election going on somewhere in the world. But what doe...

In their paper in this issue of the BJGP, Meeussen et al 1 report that GPs knew the preferred place of death for 46% of their patients with non-sudden deaths. This information came from the patient alone for 40%, from significant others alone for 36% and from both for 22%. Patients whose GP knew their preferences were more likely to achieve their wish, and GP knowledge was associated with great...

To evaluate values and experience with facilitating end-of-life care among intensive professionals (registered nurses, medical practitioners social workers) to determine perceived education support needs. Using a cross-sectional study design, 96 completed survey on knowledge, preparedness, patient family preferences, organisational culture, resources, palliative values, emotional support, plann...

Abstract There is a need for improved knowledge about how workplace conditions and organisational factors may obstruct or facilitate work in late life. By means of both quantitative qualitative data, this study aims to explore retirement preferences among employees (aged 55 older) large Swedish health-care organisation identify work-related motives influencing their preferences. The analysis sh...

BACKGROUND The completeness of preferences is assumed as one of the axioms of expected utility theory but has been subject to little empirical study. METHODS Fifteen non-health professionals was recruited and familiarised with the standard gamble technique. The group then met five times over six months and preferences were elicited independently on 41 scenarios. After individual valuation, th...

New sensory technologies and smaller, more capable mobile devices open opportunities for pervasive computing in the healthcare sector. Patients as well as medical professionals are, from a information and communication technology (ICT) point of view, better equipped than ever before. Despite this, many hospitals and other healthcare service providers have yet to exploit the potential unleashed ...