Our study assesses how work-related monetary and nonmonetary factors affect physicians' job satisfaction at three academic medical centers in Germany and the United States, two countries whose differing health care systems experience similar problems in maintaining their physician workforce. We used descriptive statistics and factor and correlation analyses to evaluate physicians' responses to a self-administered questionnaire. Our study revealed that German physician respondents were less satisfied overall than their U.S. counterparts. In both countries, participation in decision making that may affect physicians' work was an important correlate of satisfaction. In Germany other important factors were opportunities for continuing education, job security, extent of administrative work, collegial relationships, and access to specialized technology. In the U.S. sample, job security, financial incentives, interaction with colleagues, and cooperative working relationships with colleagues and management were important predictors of overall job satisfaction. The implications of these findings for the development of policies and management tactics to increase physician job satisfaction in German and U.S. academic medical centers are discussed.

OBJECTIVE: To use unweighted counts of dependencies in activities of daily living (ADLs) to assess the impact of functional impairment requires an assumption of equal preferences for each ADL dependency. To test this assumption, we analyzed standard gamble (SG) utilities of single and combination ADL dependencies among older adults. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Four hundred older adults used multimedia software (FLAIR1) to report SG utilities for their current health and hypothetical health states of dependency in each of 7 ADLs and 8 of 30 combinations of ADL dependencies. RESULTS: Utilities for health states of multiple ADL dependencies were often greater than for states of single ADL dependencies. Dependence in eating, which is the ADL dependency with the lowest utility rating of the single ADL dependencies, ranked lower than 7 combination states. Similarly, some combination states with fewer ADL dependencies had lower utilities than those with more ADL dependencies. These findings were consistent across groups by gender, age, and education. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that the count of ADL dependencies does not adequately represent the utility for a health state. Cost-effectiveness analyses and other evaluations of programs that prevent or treat functional dependency should apply utility weights rather than relying on simple ADL counts.

We identify geographic, system, and socioeconomic differences between injured children cared for within and outside of state-designated trauma centers.

METHODS: This was a nonconcurrent observational study of a population-based sample from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development Public Patient Discharge Database 1999 to 2005. Patients were 1 to 14 years of age, with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) diagnostic codes indicative of trauma. Injury Severity Scores were calculated from ICD-9 codes and categorized into severity categories. Outcomes were hospitalization in a trauma or nontrauma center.

RESULTS: Children with severe injury who resided 0 to 10, 11 to 25, 26 to 50, and more than 50 miles from a trauma center were hospitalized in these centers at rates of 80.0%, 71.2%, 51.4%, and 28.5%, respectively. Children with severe injury who were living in a county with a trauma center were hospitalized in these centers at rates of 78.8%, whereas children living in a county without a trauma center were hospitalized in trauma centers at rates of 39.0%. Children with severe injury and public, private non-health maintenance organization (HMO), and HMO insurance were hospitalized in trauma centers at rates of 77.7%, 68.0%, and 55.4%, respectively. Age, injury severity, insurance type, residence in a county with a trauma center, and proximity to a trauma center were identified as predictors of trauma center utilization by logistic regression.

CONCLUSION: We demonstrate considerable variation in the utilization pattern of trauma specialty care for children with moderate and severe injuries. Children with HMO and private insurance are cared for less often in trauma centers than those with public insurance, even after adjustment for other variables. Increased distance to a trauma center, as well as lack of trauma center within a county, also decreases trauma center utilization. These results suggest that assessing trauma center utilization patterns in total populations of children may identify opportunities for improved referral policies and practices as part of a larger effort to ensure high-quality trauma care for all children in need.

BACKGROUND: Small asymptomatic lung nodules are found frequently in the course of cardiac computed tomography (CT) scanning. However, the utility of assessing and reporting incidental findings in healthy, asymptomatic subjects is unknown.

METHODS: The sample comprised 1023 60- to 69-year-old subjects free of clinical cardiovascular disease and cancer who participated in the Atherosclerotic Disease, VAscular functioN and genetiC Epidemiology Study. All subjects underwent cardiac CT for determination of coronary calcium between 2001 and 2004, and the first 459 subjects were assessed for incidental pulmonary findings. We used health plan clinical databases to ascertain 24-month health care use and clinical outcomes.

RESULTS: Noncalcified pulmonary nodules were reported in 81 of 459 subjects (18%). Chest CT was performed on 78% of participants in the 24 months after notification, compared with 2.5% in the previous 24 months. Chest x-ray use increased from 28% to 49%. The mean number of chest CT scans per subject was 1.3 (range, 0-5). Although no malignant lesions were diagnosed in the group who had pulmonary findings read, 1 lung cancer case was diagnosed in the group who did not have lung findings read. Among the 63 participants followed up by CT, the original lesion was not identified in 22 participants (35%), the lesion had decreased or remained stable in 39 participants (62%), and there was interval growth in 2 participants (3%).

CONCLUSION: Reporting noncalcified pulmonary nodules resulted in substantial rescanning that overwhelmingly revealed resolution or stability of pulmonary nodules, arguing for benign processes.

BACKGROUND: Strengthening hospital safety culture offers promise for reducing adverse events, but efforts to improve culture may not succeed if hospital managers perceive safety differently from frontline workers.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether frontline workers and supervisors perceive a more negative patient safety climate (ie, surface features, reflective of the underlying safety culture) than senior managers in their institutions. To ascertain patterns of variation within management levels by professional discipline.

RESEARCH DESIGN: A safety climate survey was administered from March 2004 to May 2005 in 92 US hospitals. Individual-level cross sectional comparisons related safety climate to management level. Hierarchical and hospital-fixed effects modeling tested differences in perceptions.

SUBJECTS: Random sample of hospital personnel (18,361 respondents).

MEASURES: Frequency of responses indicating absence of safety climate (percent problematic response) overall and for 8 survey dimensions.

RESULTS: Frontline workers' safety climate perceptions were 4.8 percentage points (1.4 times) more problematic than were senior managers', and supervisors' perceptions were 3.1 percentage points (1.25 times) more problematic than were senior managers'. Differences were consistent among 7 safety climate dimensions. Differences by management level depended on discipline: senior manager versus frontline worker discrepancies were less pronounced for physicians and more pronounced for nurses, than they were for other disciplines.

CONCLUSIONS: Senior managers perceived patient safety climate more positively than nonsenior managers overall and across 7 discrete safety climate domains. Patterns of variation by management level differed by professional discipline. Continuing efforts to improve patient safety should address perceptual differences, both among and within groups by management level.