AIDS and HIV infection raise a number of important ethical issues and problems for general practitioners. The ethical issues which impinge most directly on the personal relationship between patient and practitioner are duty to care, consent and confidentiality. These issues, and some practical problems which are likely to be encountered by practitioners, are discussed with the help of case stud...

The Value-Based Purchasing Program is forcing hospitals to improve outcomes and decrease costs. This has led to recognition of new care models to improve outcomes and reimbursement. One model is the application of an acute care nurse practitioner (ACNP) into the hospital setting. Model success is dependent on proper implementation to create a synergistic relationship with the organization, ACNP...

The famous Canadian physician William Osler once said that “the good treats the disease; great patient who has disease.” Integrative health holds same philosophy by bringing together conventional and complementary approaches in a coordinated care for whole person (body, mind, spirit) rather than giving specializing to particular organ system. can be contrasted with alternative medicine which ta...

Four cases are summarized in which the general practitioner is involved in the terminal care of one partner of a stable marital relationship. The need to conceptualize the expectations of the patient, the family and the doctor in terminal care is stressed. An attempt is made to illustrate how the quality of the pre-existing sexual relationship, the dying person's own sexuality, and ultimately t...

c Foster NE, Thomas E, Hill JC, et al. The relationship between patient and practitioner expectations and preferences, and clinical outcomes in a trial of exercise and acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis. Eur J Pain 2009 Epub Aug 6. This paper is an analysis of further data from an earlier RCT (n = 352). The study itself found that the effect of advice and exercise on knee pain and function in ...

OBJECTIVES To explore whether treatment outcomes are associated with a patient's degree of general hopefulness, expectations regarding treatment, attributions of health status, beliefs about mind-body dualism, and patient-provider relationship factors, I studied acupuncture patients' goal attainment. METHODS Sixty-two acupuncture patients were interviewed before and after acupuncture regardin...

OBJECTIVES The authors examine how patient satisfaction with health care providers relates to either the individual characteristics of respondents or the characteristics of health care providers and the structural setting in which they work. METHODS Measures of three dimensions of patient satisfaction with the general practitioner (GP)--accessibility, interpersonal relationship, information g...