Satisfaction and value: a meta-analysis in the healthcare context.

Understanding healthcare performance from the patient's perspective has attracted more attention from the scholars and practitioners as consumers are becoming the driving force to the innovation of healthcare delivery in the knowledge economy (Morath 2003; Scott 2003). However, most of the studies have been constrained in the methods by which the clinical professionals assess what they perceived as the patient's value. This research attempts to examine the constructs for the conceptualization of patient value and its relationship with patient satisfaction. The results indicate that the providers' skills and knowledge and their respectful communication with the patients are the most important. These attributes followed by the providers' level of empathy and attention and the physical environment factors.

Prolonged exposure to ethylene stimulates the negative gravitropic responses of Arabidopsis inflorescence stems and hypocotyls.

The actual effect of ethylene on shoot gravitropic response has been controversial. To elucidate the role of ethylene in the modulation of shoot gravitropic response, Arabidopsis inflorescences and light-grown seedlings were pretreated with 0.1-10 -1 of ethylene for either a long (12-48 h) or short term (0.5 h). When the gravicurvature was measured either in air or in ethylene, it was found that prolonged exposure to various levels of ethylene stimulated both inflorescence stem and hypocotyl gravicurvature in air, while the continued presence of ethylene immediately following reorientation of plant tissues inhibited gravicurvature of both tissues. Both stimulatory and inhibitory effects existed in inflorescence stems and hypocotyls when the plant tissues were exposed to a chosen concentration of ethylene. Stimulation by ethylene was stronger than its inhibition in inflorescence stems, while the reverse was true for the hypocotyls. Therefore, the continued presence of high levels of naturally produced ethylene in eto1-1 did not suppress the faster gravicurvature of inflorescence stems, whereas the removal of exogenously applied ethylene was necessary to observe faster gravicurvature of both the wild-type and eto1-1 hypocotyls. Both effects acted through the known ethylene receptor complex. These results strongly suggest that ethylene of a chosen concentration has opposing effects on the negative gravitropic responses of both inflorescence stems and hypocotyls. The ultimate negatively gravitropic behaviour of a plant tissue, when exposed to ethylene, depends on the dynamic interplay between these two opposing effects.