tion of health care professionals in Brazil perform duty in both public and private acute care hospitals, and thus are aware to a greater extent than is the general public of the differences in care quality levels between public and private acute care hospitals in the country.
Patients in public acute care hospitals in the United States were more critical of the nursing care received in those institutions than were the care givers (although not to a statistically significant extent), and American patients were almost as critical of the care they received as were the Brazilian care givers of the care delivered in Brazilian hospitals. Further research was recommended to assess the validity of patient criticism of nursing care delivered in public acute care hospitals in the United States.
The development and maintenance of output quality within any field of endeavor involves elements of philosophy, economics, operations, management, and marketing. Each of these areas of interest is applicable to the development and maintenance of output quality within the hospital environment; however, as service providers, the development and maintenance of hospital output quality must place an especially heavy emphasis on the marketing factor. This research involved a cross-cultural assessment of perceptions of nursing service quality delivered in public acute care hospital settings in Brazil and the United States.
The standards of health care are generally high throughout the United States. Within a newly industrialized country such as Brazil, however, health care standards tend to be uneven across geographical sectors, within the urban-rural dichotomy, and in relation to personal income levels. The health care needs and the desires of patients for caring and high-quality care tend to be similar, however, regardless of the extent of industrialization and regardless of internal divisions with a specific country.
Quality, however, is a ...