BACKGROUND: The employment of physician assistants (PAs) is a strategy to improve access to care. Since the new millennium, a handful of countries have turned to PAs as a means to bridge the growing gap between the supply and demand of medical services. However, little is known about this new workforce …

Objective: Multimorbidity is known for its negative effects on health related functioning. It remains unclear if these effects are stable over time. The aim was to investigate if the relation between single morbidity/multimorbidity and health related functioning is temporary or persistent. Methods: Data …

Ambient activity monitoring systems produce large amounts of data, which can be used for health monitoring. The problem is that patterns in this data reflecting health status are not identified yet. In this paper the possibility is explored of predicting the functional health status (the motor score …

BACKGROUND: Prenatal healthcare is likely to prevent adverse outcomes, but an adequate review of utilization and its determinants is lacking. OBJECTIVE: To review systematically the evidence for the determinants of prenatal healthcare utilization in high-income countries. METHOD: Search of publications …

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the appreciation of written education about pain neurophysiology in patients with fibromyalgia (FM) and its effects on illness perceptions and perceived health status. METHODS: A booklet explaining pain neurophysiology was sent to participants with FM. Appreciation was assessed …

Across all health care settings, certain patients are perceived as ‘difficult’ by clinicians. This paper’s aim is to understand how certain patients come to be perceived and labelled as ‘difficult’ patients in community mental health care, through mixed-methods research in The Netherlands between June …

Doelstelling: Het doel van deze studie is om op systematische wijze de psychometrische eigenschappen te beschrijven van de Clinical COPD Questionnaire (CCQ). Tevens heeft deze studie de bedoeling om te informeren wat de CCQ voor een vragenlijst is en hoe ermee om te gaan. Methode: Om aan de gestelde …

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of osteoarthritis (OA) increases, but the impact of the disorder on peoples' functional capacity is not known. Therefore, the objective of this study was to compare self-reported health status and functional capacity of subjects with early OA of hip and/or knee to reference …

Background: Depression and being overweight are correlated health problems in adulthood. Adolescence is a significant period for the onset and increase of depression and obesity, especially among girls. Pubertal development also occurs with concomitant increases in weight. Thus, it is not yet clear whether …