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Quality Categories (quality + category)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	75%

Selected Abstracts

Quality of care experienced by Finnish cancer patients during radiotherapy

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CANCER CARE, Issue 4 2008
M. SIEKKINEN
The purpose of this study is to describe patients' experiences of the quality of care received at a radiotherapy centre. The data were collected using the Good Nursing Care Scale For Patients (GNCS/P), which was modified for this study. Structured questionnaires were handed out in March-May 2004 to 150 adult curative cancer patients attending outpatient radiotherapy at a university hospital in Finland. A total of 135 completed questionnaires were returned. The patients were generally satisfied with the quality of care they received. Among the four quality categories, the highest ratings were given to staff characteristics, and the lowest to the environment. Younger patients, employed patients and those with a higher level of education gave the lowest quality ratings. Improvements are needed primarily in the counselling and education of patients and their relatives. The results of this study provide valuable clues for improving the quality of care in radiotherapy based on patients' expectations. [source]

Reproducibility of the Italian ISQ method for quality classification of bread wheats: An evaluation by expert assessors

JOURNAL OF THE SCIENCE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE, Issue 5 2007
Giorgia Foca
Abstract The great variety of different bakery products in Italy has led to the development of a method, the Synthetic Index of Quality (Indice Sintetico di Qualità, ISQ), for the classification of bread wheats in different quality categories. Based on chemical and rheological properties, each wheat sample is assigned to the most suitable class by an expert assessor. In many cases this procedure is not straightforward, making the class assignation uncertain, thus leading to the possibility of controversies during the trading phase. In the present study, in order to have a quantitative estimate of the validity and reliability of this procedure, a panel composed of nine expert assessors was utilised for the repeated evaluation of 100 samples of bread wheats of various qualities. The results suggest that the proposed approach can be used both to monitor the reliability of the single assessors, and to identify samples whose class assignation is reasonably indubitable, e.g. to be used for the development of automated classification methods. Moreover, the analysis of the most uncertain assignation cases can be useful in order to enhance the ISQ classification method itself. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry [source]

Health economics of asthma: assessing the value of asthma interventions

ALLERGY, Issue 12 2008
J. D. Campbell
The aim of this systematic review was to summarize and assess the quality of asthma intervention health economic studies from 2002 to 2007, compare the study findings with clinical management guidelines, and suggest avenues for future improvement of asthma health economic studies. Forty of the 177 studies met our inclusion criteria. We assessed the quality of studies using The Quality of Health Economic Studies validated instrument (total score range: 0,100). Six studies (15%) had quality category 2, 26 studies (65%) achieved quality category 3, and the remaining eight (20%) studies were scored as the highest quality level, category 4. Overall, the findings from this review are in line with the Global Initiative for Asthma clinical guidelines. Many asthma health economic studies lacked appropriate long term time horizons to match the chronic nature of the disease and suffered from using effectiveness measures that did not capture all disease related risks and benefits. We recommend that new asthma simulation models: be flexible to allow for long term time horizons, focus on using levels of asthma control in their structure, and estimate both long term asthma specific outcomes like well-controlled time as well as generic outcomes such as quality adjusted survival. [source]