Jozien Bensing

..Developments within both paradigms can benefit from interchanging ideas and principles from which eventually medical care will benefit. In this process a key role is foreseen for communication and communication research...

..This Special Issue aims to bring together ongoing research and reflections about the quality of health care communication from the patients' own perspective. In short: what do patients want?..

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..It is not clear to what extent this mirrors patients' and parents' preferences. This study investigated communication preferences of childhood cancer patients, parents, and survivors of childhood cancer...

..To adapt to specific information needs, communication training for nurses and the use of aids such as a question prompt sheet could be useful tools...

..The purpose of this article is to describe and evaluate the methodology of online focus group discussions within the setting of paediatric oncology...

..An additional objective is to explore differences in nonadherence among patients from different general practices...

..This may result in less psychological evaluations of patients' complaints...

..Therefore we investigated the following: Is the attention GPs pay to their patients' mental health problems related to their subjective and objective workload?..

..However, there is no generally accepted framework in which criteria to assess societal relevance are defined...

..Eventually, a broader context view will bridge the existing gap between theory and practice...

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..Finally, the future policy topics in the Dutch patient education are discussed...

..The aim of this study is to generate empirically based 'tips' from lay people on how medical consultations could become more successful from a patient perspective...

..Fatigue is a common problem, which is found more frequently among women than men. To date, neither the etiology of fatigue nor the factors that explain the gender difference in its incidence are still fully understood...

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..Sequence analysis can show the immediate effects of physician communication behaviors...

..It is important to take into consideration differences between gender-dyads and between countries when studying gender effects on communication across countries or when comparing studies performed in different countries...

..This study examines to what extent GPs display both strategies during consultations for minor ailments and investigates how each of these relate to the patients' perceived health, consultation frequency and medication adherence...

..Female GPs were more affective than their male colleagues, and they used gender-specific communication strategies to explore the patient's agenda. It seems necessary to use a gender-sensitive approach in communication research...

..The factors studied are background variables, medical variables, psychosocial variables and attitude, social norms and perceived control...

..To comply with these increasing demands, EACH invites new persons to become a member of one of the recently launched committees in the area of research, teaching and publishing...

..We assessed the relative effects of physicians' affect-oriented communication style and raising expectations on patients' affective state and outcome expectancies...

..To examine the effectiveness of a theory-driven self-management course in reducing cardiovascular risk in patients with screen-detected type 2 diabetes, taking ongoing medical treatment into account...

..The objective of the present project was to find out to what extent adherence experts consider this agenda relevant and feasible...

..Research is needed that explicitly investigates these needs and the influence of age-related changes in cognitive, physical, and psychosocial functioning...

..Proactive coping thus offers new insights into behavioural maintenance theory and can be used to develop effective self-management interventions...

..To describe the direct and indirect costs for people with anxiety and depressive disorders where guidelines are adhered to and patients' perceived needs are fully met...

..The purpose of this study was to examine reasons for nonparticipation and drop out in a diabetes self-management intervention...

..However, the heart rate appeared to diminish the more often the students had reassured the patient. These findings suggest that in evaluating students' communication performance there is a need to take their stress levels into account...

..This paper describes the development of the Active Listening Observation Scale (ALOS-global), an observation instrument measuring active listening and its validation in a sample of general practice consultations for minor ailments...

..Further research needs to be done to establish robust results...

..This study examined the genetic knowledge and attitudes of patients with chronic diseases, and the relationship between both. In addition, patients were asked about their preferred source of genetic information...

..This study of Australian and Dutch people with anxiety or depressive disorder aims to examine people's perceived needs and barriers to care, and to identify possible similarities and differences...

..Finally, authors should mention whether they report on data that has also been used in previous studies...

..The finding that more perceived social genetic knowledge results in more reluctance can be considered an indicator for the necessity of social debates on genetic testing...

..Our purpose in this study was to investigate older cancer patients' recall of information after patient education preceding chemotherapy...

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..There still is, however, a lack of observation instruments to do justice to the interactive nature of nurse-patient communication. Special attention should be paid to reliability and validity...

..Knowledge of the influence of these characteristics on doctor-patient communication will be important for setting European health care policies...

..New counselees may be helped by receiving more information on the counselling procedure prior to their visit, and may be advised to prepare the visit more thoroughly so as to help them verbalise more their queries during the visit...

..Secondly, our inclusion criteria focused the attention of very severe chronic pain patients, and thirdly, we have defined 'chronic' as more than 6 months, while others have been using shorter time spans...

..In this paper the balance of affective and instrumental communication employed by nurses during the admission interview with recently diagnosed cancer patients was investigated...

..Finally, the majority of the studies had a weak design. The use of experimental research designs should be pursued in future studies in order to eliminate the influence of confounding variables...

..Further research, incorporating a randomized controlled design and larger sample sizes, is recommended to determine whether the results can be attributed to this specific type of training...

..Discrepancies between relevance and performance were apparent, especially with respect to biomedical aspects. The implications for health policy and for general practitioners are discussed...

..Either the duration of the medical education or the type of statistical analysis may account for this lack of gender differences...

..Patient characteristics such as age, gender and subjective state of health appeared to play a minor role in the way nurses communicate...

..Compared to nurses in the community, nurses in the home for the elderly more often display non-verbal behaviours such as patient-directed gaze and affective touch...

..Nor method used (telephone survey, postal survey, nor definition of chronicity (>1 month; >3 months; >6 months) clearly explained the differences in prevalence in the various studies. Implications for future research are discussed...

..Compared with the home for the elderly, communication was more task-related in home care...

..A new and promising way could be to review the existing reviews of adherence to interventions and identify the underlying theories for effective interventions. That is the aim of our study...

..In hormonal therapy, men who are diagnosed longer than two years ago report a worse cognitive functioning and more burdens from urinary problems...

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..Future research should focus on the gender-specificity of the factors that lead to the development of persistent fatigue...

..Increasing insight into individual needs may help counselors in better addressing these concerns, potentially increasing the likelihood of successful counseling...

..The results are discussed from a pedagogical perspective, and implications for medical practice are formulated...

..To investigate how oncologists can balance explicit with general and realistic with hopeful information when discussing various topics at the transition from curative to palliative care in breast cancer...

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..While international comparisons of medical practice have noted differences in length of visit, few studies have addressed the dynamics of visit exchange...

..More research is required into the specific needs of anxiety and depression patients. Open communication between patient and provider could lead to valuable improvements in treatment...

..Further, for both patients and partners, the adverse effect of received negative responses on end-of day mood was moderated by receiving emotional support on the same day...

..The objective of this study was to investigate how time since diagnosis and treatment intensity influence psychological outcomes in patients with screen-detected type 2 diabetes...

..A computer-assisted instruction (CAI) programme was developed -- 'Interact-Cancer' -- which is a time-efficient learning method and easily accessible at the workplace...

..The program consists of four-weekly meetings with 8-10 participants and is given by trainers of about the same age as the participants...

..Also, a more effective service may be attained if counselors pay more attention to counselees' emotional needs and detail more inheritance and penetrance of mutated genes in relation to counselees' family history...

..To investigate the effectiveness of snoezelen, integrated in 24-hour daily care, on the behavior and mood of demented nursing home residents...

..Feedback was intended to help counselors make counselees' needs more explicit and increase counselors' sensitivity to these...

..To investigate the effectiveness of snoezelen, integrated in 24-hour care, on the communication of Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) and demented nursing home residents during morning care...

..This paper reports an investigation of the effects of the implementation of snoezelen, or multisensory stimulation, on the quality of nursing assistants' behaviour during morning care...

..Our findings imply the need for methodologically sound research into the effectiveness of professional and informal services for child emotional and behavioural problems...

..To devise and test a model describing the process of help-seeking for child psychopathology in professional and informal service settings...

..This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of integrated snoezelen on work-related outcomes (workload and psychological outcomes) of caregivers in psychogeriatric nursing homes...

..Interventions aimed at increasing adolescent mental health service use should be directed at parents and adolescents, and at the roles of school personnel and general practitioners in the detection of problems and referral...

..However, the lack of intervention in the organisational structure and obstructive factors such as under-staffing seemed to get in the way of the integration of multi-sensory stimulation in the daily care in two of the six wards...

..Providing medical information appears the most powerful communication aspect to increase counselee satisfaction and address needs. More research is needed on how to address adequately (emotional) needs and increase feelings of control...

..GPs state that patients with mental problems make heavy demands on their available time. To what extent these perceived problems correspond with reality needs more investigation...

..To investigate if general practitioners (GPs) with a higher workload are less inclined to encourage their patients to disclose psychological problems, and are less aware of their patients' psychological problems...

..This may influence patients' expectations and requests for help and GPs' performance. In this paper the effects of working in different health care systems on demand and supply for psychological help were examined...

..To confront the views of refugee patients and general practitioners in the Netherlands, focusing on medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS)...

..Negative experience tended to be interpreted as a sign of prejudice on the part of the healthcare professional. The findings of this study are discussed in the wider context of research into patient priorities in general practice...

..CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that counselors' authority prevails over mutuality with individual counselees, in their communication about risks...

..Child and adolescent psychological problems are rarely brought to the attention of GPs. Children and adolescents with psychological problems who do visit their GP are seldom identified as such by GPs...

..To determine the association of parent, family, and adolescent variables with adolescent mental health service need and utilization...

..GPs report that patients' psychosocial problems play a part in 20% of all consultations. GPs state that these consultations are more time-consuming and the perceived burden on the GP is higher...

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..It is concluded that the study provided GPs with a tool to discuss illness representations and actions plan of patients with hypertension. Implications for the management of hypertension adherence in primary care are discussed...

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..We propose that proactive coping may be important for successful aging, since it results in a prolonged availability of resources for optimization and compensation processes and a delay in disengagement from important goals...

..To explore relations of fatigue, physical disabilities, and depression in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) cross-sectionally and over time...

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..Furthermore, we investigated the positive as well as negative side effects and differential effectiveness of the program...

..We also tested the differences between pre-chronic, recently chronic, and persistently chronic pain in the prediction of disability (impaired physical and mental capacity, pain interference with activities, immobility due to pain)...