Context The paper refers to the increased competition between health care providers and the need for patient-centred services in Greece. Using service quality methodology, this paper investigates service quality perceptions of patients in Greek public primary health centres.Objective To test the internal consistency and applicability of SERVQUAL in primary health care centres in Greece.Strategy SERVQUAL was used to examine whether patients have different expectations from health care providers and whether different groups of patients may consider some dimensions of care more important than others.Results The analysis showed that there were gaps in all dimensions measured by SERVQUAL. The largest gap was detected in empathy. Further analysis showed that there were also differences depending on gender, age and education levels. A separate analysis of expectations and perceptions revealed that this gap was because of differences in patientsÕ perceptions rather than expectations.Discussion and conclusions This paper raises a number of issues that concern the applicability of SERVQUAL in health care services and could enhance current discussions about SERVQUAL improvement. Quality of health care needs to be redefined by encompassing multiple dimensions. Beyond a simple expectations-perceptions gap, people may hold different understandings of health care that, in turn, influence their perception of the quality of services.

Understanding the development of differentiated instruction for students with and without disabilities in co-taught classrooms, Disability & Society.

This paper provides useful information on assessing patient satisfaction in Greek public hospitals which could be used elsewhere.

Purpose: The main aims of this study were to evaluate the quality of life of wildfire victims and compare it with that of a control sample of people unaffected by the disaster, and to identify confounder factors (previous psychiatric caseness, demographic factors and losses) which may influence the quality of life. Methods: This was a cross sectional case-control study. Participants belonged to an adult population which had taken part in a previous study 6 months after the disaster. The measured variables were: 1) quality of life using the WHOQOL-BREF measure, 2) previous psychiatric caseness as identified using the SCL-90-R and 3) demographics. Results: Victims of the wildfires had a statistically significant poorer quality of life in the three domains of physical health, psychological health, and environment compared to controls. After adjusting for other variables, the only difference between victims and controls was in the environment domain. Conclusions: Disasters have long lasting effects on victims. Psychological and physical health may improve after some time but environmental quality of life may need longer. However, it is not known yet if the environmental aspect of quality of life could affect other aspects such as psychological health or social relationships in the future.

We investigated the trust in institutions, social values and personal attitudes of individuals in a part of Greece, after a wildfire disaster. The design of the study was a cross sectional, case-control study. Data collected were trust in institutions, social and personal attitudes, type and number of losses. The results show that victims and controls have low trust in all the institutions and share similar social and personal attitudes. Controlling for other variables, victims of the wildfires were less likely to appreciate stable social rules, to value the dialogue, autonomy, mutual support, modesty, wealth, equality, compliance with law, devotion, public recognition, safety and less likely to trust the government but more likely to trust church. This study suggests that victims of the wildfires in Greece did not appreciate important social values which bring a society together, they have a low trust in institutions, and they have a weak social cohesion which perhaps pre-existed the disaster; just the disaster has made all of them worse.