Medical-technical quality of care describes how the professional performs his or her tasks according to the standards of his or her profession, for example, how a general practitioner makes a diagnosis or how a nurse provides the care. The medical-technical quality of care is not included in this project because it is the responsibility of the different professional or scientific societies. The functional quality of care considers the organisation of care and how professionals co-operate to provide care for patients. In this research we have limited ourselves to the care provided by general practitioners, medical specialists and nurses working in hospitals. These three groups are the professionals with whom every one of our sample of cancer patients had contact during the treatment and care of the disease.
Results show that patients are satisfied with the aspects of the quality of care from professionals.
The mean score patients gave the professionals was between 65 and 85 on 100-points scales, where 100 is the perfect score. These positive results are supported by the number of positive remarks and grievances reported by patients. Significantly more positive remarks were made by the patients than grievances, in consideration of the professionals. It is important that, in addition to patients' opinions of aspects of quality of care, the professionals also give an opinion about the quality of care. Research among professionals is seldom published and has, when it is published, low response rates.