Patients' perceptions of quality of care delivery by urology residents: A nationwide study

Objective To present the results of a nationwide survey among urological patients to evaluate their perception of the quality of care provided by residents. Methods An anonymous survey was distributed to patients who were referred to 22 Italian academic institutions. The survey aimed to investigate the professional figure of the urology resident as perceived by the patient. Results A total of 2587 patients were enrolled in this study. In all, 51.6% of patients were able to correctly identify a urology resident; however, almost 40% of respondents discriminated residents from fully trained urologists based exclusively on their young age. Overall, 98.2% patients rated the service provided by the resident as at least sufficient. Urology trainees were considered by more than 50% of the patients interviewed to have good communication skills, expertise and willingness. Overall, patients showed an excellent willingness to be managed by urology residents. The percentage of patients not available for this purpose showed an increasing trend that directly correlated with the difficulty of the procedure. Approximately 5-10% of patients were not willing to be managed by residents for simple procedures such as clinical visits, cystoscopy or sonography, and up to a third of patients were not prepared to undergo any surgical procedure performed by residents during steps in major surgery, even if the residents were adequately tutored. Conclusions Our data showed that patients have a good willingness to be managed by residents during their training, especially for medium- to low-difficulty procedures. Furthermore, the majority of patients interviewed rated the residents' care delivery as sufficient. Urology trainees were considered to have good communication skills, expertise and willingness

Sleep continuity, stability and organization in good and bad sleepers.

The relationship between objective and subjective sleep quality is still debated. Here we investigate differences in objective sleep parameters in habitual subjective good (GS) and bad sleepers (BS) with the aim of evaluating sleep continuity, stability and organization as possible determinants of subjective sleep quality. Thirty-eight subjects (GS, N=18; BS, N=20), underwent two nights of sleep recording. Traditional sleep parameters displayed no between-groups differences. Conversely, BS showed lower sleep continuity (awakenings frequency), stability (e.g., arousals and state transitions frequency) and organization (e.g., number of sleep cycles, Time spent in Cycles). Our findings point to the involvement of these measures in determining habitual sleep quality perception and suggest the possibility to include them in standard sleep assessments