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This article focuses on the relationship between higher education, employability of graduates and students' satisfaction with their studies, drawing on European statistics, as well as on data collected at national and/or institutional level in Portugal and Sweden. Employability has been understood as a measure of higher education quality and one of the issues at stake within the Bologna process. Having this in mind, the authors try to answer three main questions: What was the baseline situation in the two countries concerning higher education systems, enrolment in higher education and graduate employability before 2007? Were students satisfied with their studies and professional job situation before 2007? Which trends is it possible to envisage -tendencies of enrolment, mobility, employment -after 2007? Data analysed allows these questions to be answered and provides an important comparison due to the fact that both countries started to implement the Bologna structure in 2007 and have quite different educational systems. The authors discuss if 'Bologna' makes a difference regarding graduate employability and students' satisfaction with their studies, and how the differences between the countries can be understood.

Purpose The objective was to explore the role and contribution of co-workers in the return-to-work process. The social interaction of co-workers in the return to work process are analysed within the framework of the Swedish national and local employer organisational return-to-work policies.Methods An exploratory qualitative method was used, consisting of open-ended interviews with 33 workplace actors across seven work units. Organisational return-towork policies were collected from the three public sector employers. ResultsThe key findings that emerged during analysis showed that some co-workers have a more work-task oriented approach towards the return-to-work process, whilst others had a more social relational approach. In both situations the social relations worked hand in hand with job tasks (how task were allocated, and how returning workers were supported by others) and could make or break the return-to-work process.Conclusion A suggestion for improvement of return-to-work models and policies is the need to take into account the social relations amongst workplace actors, especially involving co-workers when planning for return-to-work interventions. Otherwise the proper attention to work arrangements, social communication and the role if co-workers in the return-to-work process might not be seen.

In a multicultural society, ethnocultural empathy has become an important element in most health settings and development of this capacity has become a central component for health care professionals in their interactions with patients and clients. In this study, differences in basic empathy and ethnocultural empathy were explored in a sample of 365 undergraduate students at the beginning and end of four masters programs in health care ( medicine, psychology, nursing, and social work). Results showed that it was mainly psychology students in the first semester who had significantly higher general empathic skills and ethnocultural empathic skills compared to students in the other study programs. Few signs of differences between students in their first and in later semesters were obtained. The observed differences may be explained by ( a) levels of admission grades and applications requirements or (b) different cultures and expectations from the surrounding milieus in the investigated study programs.

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in: EVALUATION and THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS, (32), 3, 300-313, 2009. Chato Rasoal, Tomas Jungert, Elinor Edvardsson Stiwne and Gerhard Andersson, Ethnocultural Empathy Among Students in Health Care Education http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163278709338569 by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. http://www.uk.sagepub.com/

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