INTRODUCTION 5 billion people around the world do not have access to safe, affordable, timely surgical care. This series of qualitative interviews was launched by The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (LCoGS) with the aim of understanding the contextual challenges-the specific circumstances-faced by surgical care providers in low-resource settings who care for impoverished patients, and how t...

BACKGROUND In Finland, dental services are provided by a public (PDS) and a private sector. In the past, children, young adults and special needs groups were entitled to care and treatment from the public dental services (PDS). A major reform in 2001 - 2002 opened the PDS and extended subsidies for private dental services to all adults. It aimed to increase equity by improving adults' access to...

AIMS The aim of this paper is to report a trial to investigate the feasibility of the nurse practitioner role in local health service delivery and to provide information about the educational and legislative requirements for nurse practitioner practice. BACKGROUND Nurse practitioners have been shown to offer a beneficial service and fill a gap in health care provision. However, the lack of pu...

BACKGROUND Obstetrics remains the largest medico-legal liability in healthcare. Neither an increasing awareness of patient safety nor a long tradition of reporting obstetric outcomes have reduced either rates of medical error or obstetric litigation. International debate continues about the best approaches to measuring and improving patient safety. In this study, we set out to assess the feasib...

European countries are becoming multicultural societies, and national health systems have progressively adapted following their political and historical peculiarities. Overall, sick, immigrants with regularised administrative status are able to use health services in equal terms than people from the host country. Legal immigrants have a poorer health status and worse living conditions than the ...

Cohort Profile: The Kiang West Longitudinal Population Study (KWLPS)—a platform for integrated research and health care provision in rural Gambia Branwen J Hennig, Stefan A Unger, Bai Lamin Dondeh, Jahid Hassan, Sophie Hawkesworth, Landing Jarjou, Kerry S Jones, Sophie E Moore, Helen M Nabwera, Mohammed Ngum, Ann Prentice, Bakary Sonko, Andrew M Prentice* and Anthony J Fulford MRC International...

BACKGROUND Post bureaucracy is increasingly shaping how health care professionals work. Within hospital settings, post bureaucracy is frequently connected to loss of professional autonomy and protocol-based care. However, this development also affects relationships between care providers and care receivers. QUESTION To explore experiences of post bureaucratic hospital reforms and their impact...

Dementia care is in transition, and the potential exists for a radical reform of the provision of services to people with dementia. Recent developments in Scotland based on the report of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care, With Respect to Old Age, provide an example of the possibilities and opportunities available to governments for creating services based on principles of equity and justic...

Background Lack of timely and quality emergency obstetric care (EmOC) has contributed significantly to maternal morbidity and mortality, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Since 2009, the global guideline, referred to as the 'handbook', has been used to monitor availability, utilization, and quality of EmOC. Objective To assess application and explore experiences of resea...

From 1997 to 1999, the Chilean Ministry of Health conducted studies on the health care networks in each of the country's 13 regions in order to help plan regional health sector development and define investment projects. Health insurance coverage displayed major geographic, age, and gender variations. Out-patient and in-patient medical care in the public sector showed substantial geographic var...