Inability to recognize emotional expressions of others (emotion perception) is one of the most common impairments observed among individuals with schizophrenia. Such deficits presumably contribute much to the social dysfunction characteristic of schizophrenia. This study examined the efficacy of a novel attentional-shaping intervention to improve emotion perception abilities. Sixty participants with schizophrenia were randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions: 1) attentional-shaping, 2) contingent monetary reinforcement, or 3) repeated practice. Participants completed the Face Emotion Identification Test (FEIT) at pre-test, intervention, post-test, and one week follow-up. Participants also completed the Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Test (BLERT) and the Social Behavior Scale at pre-test and follow-up to measure generalization.The results showed that the attentional-shaping condition had significantly higher scores on the FEIT at intervention, post-test, and follow-up compared to monetary reinforcement and repeated practice. Improvement was also found on the BLERT and a trend was found for improved social behaviors at one-week follow-up. Results will be discussed in terms of face scanning and attentional deficits present in schizophrenia and potential uses of this intervention in the remediation of emotion perception deficits.

BACKGROUND:Patient safety (PS) is one of the essential elements of health care quality and a priority of healthcare systems in most countries. Thus the creation of validated instruments and the implementation of systems that measure patient safety are considered to be of great importance worldwide.AIM:The present paper aims to illustrate the process of linguistic validation, cross-cultural verification and adaptation of the Bulgarian version of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (B-HSOPSC) and its test-retest reliability.METHODS:The study design is cross-sectional. The HSOPSC questionnaire consists of 42 questions, grouped in 12 different subscales that measure patient safety culture. Internal con­sistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the split-half method were used; the Spear­man-Brown coefficient was calculated.RESULTS:The overall Cronbach’s alpha for B-HSOPSC is 0.918. Subscales 7 Staffing and 12 Overall perceptions of safety had the lowest coefficients. The high reliability of the instrument was confirmed by the Split-half method (0.97) and ICC-coefficient (0.95). The lowest values of Spearmen-Broun coefficients were found in items A13 and A14.CONCLUSION:The study offers an analysis of the results of the linguistic validation of the B-HSOPSC and its test-retest reliability. The psychometric characteristics of the questions revealed good validity and reliability, except two questions. In the future, the instrument will be administered to the target population in the main study so that the psychometric properties of the instrument can be verified.

AimTo validate the Bulgarian EUROPEP-questionnaire and its implementation to measure patient evaluation of general practice care in Bulgarian population.MethodsA multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted at twenty five primary care practices from South-Central Region of Bulgaria. A total of 1000 adult patients aged over 18 years and visiting the practice for more than a year were approached consecutively to take part in the study. The internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the EUROPEP questionnaire were evaluated. To confirm the construct validity of the questionniare, еxplanatory factor analysis was performed.ResultsCronbach’alpha for “clinical behaviour” is 0.95 and for “organisation of care” 0.81. Factor analysis identifed two factors, which accounted for 77.0% of the total variation in these items. On average, 58.7% of respondents rated the level of care received as excellent. The waiting time in the waiting room was the item most poorly rated (33.8%). The item “keeping patients' records and data confidential” was the most highly rated (88.8%). Patients were less satisfied with “providing quick services for urgent health problems” (78.5% excellent or good) and “getting an appropriate for them appointment” (76.2% excellent or good).ConclusionTwo scales with satisfactory psychometric properties were established in the Bulgarian version of the EUROPEP-questionnaire. The study identified areas requiring improvement in general practice, such as reduction in waiting times and obtaining patient’s convenience appointment.

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