This Article Extract Reprint (PDF) Submit a response to this article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when Comments are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My Personal Archive Download to Citation Manager Reprints & Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content

Cross-National Comparisons

Cross-National Comparisons

In such an era, nations cannot afford to be insular, and ethnocentrism bears too high a price tag. Despite political and cultural differences across countries, world citizens have much to learn from how others have tackled problems similar to their own. Nowhere is this more true than in health care. Here we present a diverse set of papers united by a common thread: comparing critical health system components across nations.

The first paper, by Robert Blendon, Minah Kim, and John Benson, reviews a controversial new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) examining health system performance in seventeen countries. They compare these data with findings from Eurobarometer 49, general population surveys done in fifteen European countries; and with findings from two surveys by the Harvard School of Public Health. This paper is accompanied by a reaction from WHO researchers.

Next, Mark McClellan and Daniel Kessler, on behalf of the Technological Change in Health Care (TECH) Research Network, explore differences in technological change around the world, based on evidence from heart attack care in sixteen countries. Finally, Linda Aiken and a multinational group of authors report the results of surveys of nurses in five countries, focusing on nurses’ perceptions of their own working conditions as well as care of patients in hospitals.

                      What's this?