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Background The relationship between nurses’ job satisfaction and their perceptions of quality of care has been examined in previous studies. There is little evidence, however, about relationships between the job satisfaction of nursing staff and quality of care perceived by the patients. The aim of this study was to analyze, how the job satisfaction of nursing staff, organizational characteristics (hospital and unit type), and patients’ age relate to patients’ perceptions of the quality of care. Methods The study was cross-sectional and descriptive, based on a secondary analysis of survey data acquired during the At Safe study in Finland. The study included 98 units at four acute care hospitals between autumn 2008 and spring 2009. The participants were 1909 patients and 929 nursing staff. Patients’ perceptions of quality of care were measured using the 42-item RHCS questionnaire. Job satisfaction of nursing staff was measured with the 37-item KUHJSS scale. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, t-tests, analysis of variance, linear regression, and multivariate analysis of variance. Results Patients’ perceptions of overall quality of care were positively related to general job satisfaction of nursing staff. Adequate numbers of staff appeared to be the clearest aspect affecting quality of care. Older patients were more satisfied with staff number than younger patients. Patients cared for in outpatient departments felt more respected than patients in wards, whereas patients in wards reported better care of basic needs (e.g., hygiene, food) than outpatients. Conclusions The evaluation of resources by nursing staff is related to patients’ perceptions of the adequacy of nursing staff levels in the unit. The results emphasize the importance of considering patients’ perceptions of the quality of care and assessments by nurses of their job satisfaction at the hospital unit level when evaluating quality of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Preeclampsia is a frequent syndrome and its cause has been linked to multiple factors, making prevention of the syndrome a continuous challenge. One of the suggested risk factors for preeclampsia is advanced maternal age. In the Western countries, maternal age at first delivery has been steadily increasing, yet few studies have examined women of advanced maternal age with preeclampsia. The purpose of this registry-based study was to compare the obstetric outcomes in primiparous and preeclamptic women younger and older than 35 years. Methods: The registry-based study used data from three Finnish health registries: Finnish Medical Birth Register, Finnish Hospital Discharge Register and Register of Congenital Malformations. The sample contained women under 35 years of age (N = 15,437) compared with those 35 and over (N = 2,387) who were diagnosed with preeclampsia and had their first singleton birth in Finland between 1997 and 2008. In multivariate modeling, the main outcome measures were Preterm delivery (before 34 and 37 weeks), low Apgar score (5 min.), small-for-gestational-age, fetal death, asphyxia, Cesarean delivery, induction, blood transfusion and admission to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Results: Women of advanced maternal age (AMA) exhibited more preeclampsia (9.4%) than younger women (6.4%). They had more prior terminations (<0.001), were more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) >25 (<0.001), had more in vitro fertilization (IVF) (<0.001) and other fertility treatments (<0.001) and a higher incidence of maternal diabetes (<0.001) and chronic hypertension (<0.001). Multivariate logistic regression indicated that women of AMA had higher rates of: preterm delivery before 37 weeks 19.2% (OR 1.39 CI 1.24 to 1.56) and before 34 weeks 8.7% (OR 1.68 CI 1.43 to 2.00) low Apgar scores at 5 min. 7.1% (OR 1.37 CI 1.00 to 1.88), Small-for-Gestational Age (SGA) 26.5% (OR 1.42 CI 1.28 to 1.57), Asphyxia 12.1% (OR 1.54 CI 1.34 to 1.77), Caesarean delivery 50% (OR 2.02 CI 1.84 to 2.20) and admission to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) 31.6% (OR 1.45 CI 1.32 to 1.60). Conclusions: Preeclampsia is more common in women with advanced maternal age. Advanced maternal age is an independent risk factor for adverse outcomes in first-time mothers with preeclampsia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The occurrence of obstetric anal sphincter injuries (OASIS) - which may have serious, long-term effects on affected women, including faecal incontinence, despite primary repair - varies widely between countries and have been chosen one of the indicators for patient safety in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and in Nordic countries. Findings: The aim of the study was to assess risks of OASIS among five university teaching hospitals and 14 non-university central hospitals with more than 1,000 deliveries annually during 1997-2007 in Finland. Women with singleton vaginal deliveries divided into two populations consisting of all 168,637 women from five university hospitals and all 255,660 women from non-university hospitals, respectively, derived from population-based register. Primiparous and multiparous women with OASIS (n = 2,448) were compared in terms of possible risk factors to primiparous and multiparous women without OASIS, respectively, using stepwise logistic regression analysis. The occurrences of OASIS varied from 0.7% to 2.1% in primiparous and from 0.1% to 0.3% in multiparous women among the university hospitals. Three-fold inter-hospital differences in OASIS rates did not significantly change after adjustment for patient mix or the use of interventions. In non-university hospitals OASIS rates varied from 0.2% to 1.4% in primiparous and from 0.02% to 0.4% in multiparous women, and the results remained virtually unchanged after adjustment for known risks. Conclusions: Up to 3.2-fold inter-hospital differences in OASIS risk demonstrates significant differences in the quality of Finnish obstetric care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Obstetric anal sphincter rupture (OASR) is a serious complication of delivery, which frequently results in faecal incontinence despite primary repair and has serious implications for women's health. The objective of this study was to assess whether human factors, workload and staffing at night, at weekends and during holidays has an effect on the increasing OASR rates among all singleton vaginal deliveries (n = 514,741) having occurred between 1997 and 2007 in Finland. Women (n = 2,849) with OASR were compared in terms of possible risk factors to women without OASR using stepwise logistic regression analysis. Findings: In Finland, the increase in OASR rate is striking, from 0.2% in 1997 to 0.9% in 2007. OASR rates varied from 0.49% to 0.58% (≤ 0.001) according to the time of day, and were lowest at night. After adjustment for patient-mix and the use of interventions, the risk of OASR was 11% lower (95% CI 3-18%) at night and 15% lower (95% CI 3-26%) in July - the main holiday month. Only 14% of the increased OASR risk during the day time (8-23.59) was attributable to vacuum assistance and birth weight, whereas the holiday period had no effect. Conclusions: Decreased OASR rates at night and in July suggest that human factors such as decreased alertness due to fatigue or hospitals' administrative factors such as workload and staffing did not increase the rates of OASR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Smoking during pregnancy is known to negatively affect pregnancy outcomes and it has been associated with numerous complications during pregnancy. Smoking is more common in younger pregnant women, but previous research has shown that adverse pregnancy outcomes related to older maternal age and smoking are even more harmful than with younger smokers. The aim of this study was to compare pregnancy outcomes among smoking and non-smoking pregnant women aged <35 years and ≥35 years.Methods: In this registry-based study, the data were collected from three national Finnish health registries: Finnish Medical Birth Register, Finnish Hospital Discharge Register, and Register of Congenital Malformations between the years 1997 and 2008. The data included information on 80 260 women who were smoking during pregnancy, of which 11 277 (9%) were ≥35 years and 68 983 (13%) were <35 years old. In multivariate modelling, the main outcome measures were preterm delivery, low Apgar scores at 1 min., low birth weight, small for gestational age, fetal death and preeclampsia.Results: Fewer older women smoked during pregnancy (9%) than younger women did (13%). Smoking increased the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, most in the older group. Multivariate logistic regression using non-smoking women aged <35 years as a reference group indicated that smoking women <35 years had higher rates of preterm delivery (OR 1.27 CI 1.20-1.35), SGA (OR 2.18 CI 2.10-2.26) and LBW (OR 1.73 CI 1.62-1.84).Non-smoking women ≥35 had higher rates of preterm delivery (OR 1.15 CI 1.10-1.20), fetal death (OR 1.36 CI 1.12-1.64), preeclampsia (OR 1.14 CI 1.09-1.20) and LBW (OR 1.13 CI 1.07-1.19).Smoking women ≥35 had higher rates of preterm delivery (OR 1.60 CI 1.40-1.82), SGA (OR 2.55 CI 2.34-2.79), fetal death (OR 2.70 CI 1.80-4.05) and LBW (OR 2.50 CI 2.20-2.80).Conclusions: Smoking during pregnancy increased the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes in all women, but the rates were the highest for women aged ≥35 years. Pregnant women aged ≥35 years smoking during pregnancy was a distinctly high risk group. Maternity care should identify these women and support them in cessation of smoking during the first trimester of pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Job satisfaction of staff is an essential outcome variable in research when describing the work environment of successful hospitals. Numerous studies have evaluated the topic, but few previous studies have assessed the job satisfaction of all staff in hospital settings. It is important to discover if there are any unsatisfied groups of people working in hospitals, the aspects they are unsatisfied with and why. The aim of this study was to evaluate job satisfaction of all staff working at a Finnish university hospital, identify differences in job satisfaction between staff groups, and explore the relationship between their self-evaluated quality of work and job satisfaction.Methods: Data were collected from 1424 employees of the hospital using the web-based Kuopio University Job Satisfaction Scale survey instrument in autumn 2010. The research data were analysed by using SPSS 19.0 for Windows. Frequency and percentage distributions, as well as mean values, were used to describe the data. A non-parametric test (Kruskal-Wallis test) was used to determine the significance of differences in scores between different groups of staff members and between quality evaluations.Results: The overall job satisfaction of the employees was good. They rated both motivating factors of their work and work welfare as excellent. The areas causing most dissatisfaction were work demands and participation in decision making. Physicians formed the most satisfied group, nurses and maintenance staff were the least satisfied, and office and administrative staff were fairly satisfied. Staff who rated the quality of work in their units as high usually also considered their job satisfaction to be excellent.Conclusions: Every staff member has an influence on job satisfaction in her/his unit. A culture of participation should be developed and maintained in the units and the whole hospital to ensure that all staff feel they play important roles in the hospital. A university hospital is a complex, continuously changing work environment. Managers of the hospital should continuously evaluate job satisfaction and quickly react to the results gained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Epidemiology and ecology share many fundamental research questions. Here we describe how principal coordinates of neighbor matrices (PCNM), a method from spatial ecology, can be applied to spatial epidemiology. PCNM is based on geographical distances among sites and can be applied to any set of sites providing a good coverage of a study area. In the present study, PCNM eigenvectors corresponding to positive autocorrelation were used as explanatory variables in linear regressions to model incidences of eight most common cancer types in Finnish municipalities (n = 320). The dataset was provided by the Finnish Cancer Registry and it included altogether 615,839 cases between 1953 and 2010., Results: PCNM resulted in 165 vectors with a positive eigenvalue. The first PCNM vector corresponded to the wavelength of hundreds of kilometers as it contrasted two main subareas so that municipalities located in southwestern Finland had the highest positive site scores and those located in midwestern Finland had the highest negative scores in that vector. Correspondingly, the 165(th) PCNM vector indicated variation mainly between the two small municipalities located in South Finland. The vectors explained 13 - 58% of the spatial variation in cancer incidences. The number of outliers having standardized residual > |3| was very low, one to six per model, and even lower, zero to two per model, according to Chauvenet's criterion. The spatial variation of prostate cancer was best captured (adjusted r (2) = 0.579)., Conclusions: PCNM can act as a complementary method to causal modeling to achieve a better understanding of the spatial structure of both the response and explanatory variables, and to assess the spatial importance of unmeasured explanatory factors. PCNM vectors can be used as proxies for demographics and causative agents to deal with autocorrelation, multicollinearity, and confounding variables. PCNM may help to extend spatial epidemiology to areas with limited availability of registers, improve cost-effectiveness, and aid in identifying unknown causative agents, and predict future trends in disease distributions and incidences. A large advantage of using PCNM is that it can create statistically valid reflectors of real predictors for disease incidence models with only little resources and background information.