The concept of organizational culture is important in understanding the behaviour of individuals in organizations as they manage external demands and internal social changes. Cyprus healthcare system is under restructuring and soon a new healthcare scheme will be implemented starting at the Primary Healthcare (PHC) level. The aim of the study was to investigate the underlying culture encountered in the PHC setting of Cyprus and to identify possible differences in desired and prevailing cultures among healthcare professionals.

Workplace bulling is a pervasive phenomenon with negative consequences for the health of victims and the productivity of organizations. The aim of this study was to measure the prevalence and forms of workplace bullying among employees working at the public health-care sector of Cyprus using the Greek version of Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terror (LIPT) instrument. A translation process was followed from the French to the Greek version of LIPT questionnaire. Test-retest reliability expressed by Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.98 indicating excellent reproducibility. Internal consistency reliability assessed by Cronbach α coefficient was 0.87 suggesting high reliability. LIPT instrument was distributed among 403 employees working at the primary health-care setting and at the largest public hospital of Cyprus with response rate of 73.4%. Women comprised the majority of participants (71.4%). Mean age was 43.3 years. Prevalence of workplace bulling according to Leymann's definition was 5.9%. Most common forms of bullying were "Being continuously interrupted" (17.2%) and "continuously being given new work assignments" (13.5%). Women were significantly more often exposed to at least one mobbing behavior than men within the previous year (49% vs. 35.7%, p = 0.038), whereas nurses were significantly exposed to at least one mobbing behavior as compared to physicians (53.3% vs. 31.4%, p = 0.004). This was the first study that examined the prevalence of workplace bullying in the public health-care sector by elaborating the Greek version of LIPT instrument. Results showed that workplace bullying is a common and complex phenomenon among health-care organizations.

Background: In recent years, a significant progress has been achieved globally in reduction of smoking among physicians and nurses, however, in some countries the smoking prevalence of health professionals is maintained at very high levels, without significant difference from the general...

Asthma is one of the main non-infectious diseases of the respiratory system with substantial economic burden worldwide. The objective of this study was to estimate the economic burden of adult asthma in Cyprus during 2015. A retrospective probabilistic prevalence-based cost of illness model was developed to calculate the economic burden of asthma including direct and indirect costs. The bottom-up approach (person-based data) was used for the calculation of direct costs while for the calculation of indirect costs the approach of human capital was employed. In addition, bootstrapped sensitivity analysis with 1000 bootstrap simulations was performed in order to calculate a 95% Confidence Interval (CI). Mean patient cost of asthma in Cyprus in 2015 was estimated at €579.64 (95% CI: €376.90–€813.68). Direct costs accounted for 82.08% of the overall expenses, €475.75 per patient (95% CI: €296.94–€697.69). Indirect costs of €103.89 (95% CI: €49.59–€181.46) accounted for 17.92% of the overall expenses. This was the first study in Cyprus, which used bootstrapped prevalence-based cost of illness model to estimate the cost of asthma. This study confirms that asthma is an expensive disease for the society. In addition, it provides important information and analysis of the economic consequences of asthma to policy makers in order to strengthen surveillance of the disease as well as draft the national health policy accordingly.

Recent guidelines recommend assessment and treatment of the overall risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) through management of multiple risk factors in patients at high absolute risk. The aim of our study was to assess the level of cardiovascular risk in patients with known risk factors for CVD by applying the SCORE risk function and to study the implications of European guidelines on the use of treatment and goal attainment for blood pressure (BP) and lipids in the primary care of Cyprus.

Quality Improvement Interventions require significant financial investments, and therefore demand careful consideration in their design in order to maximize potential benefits. In this correspondence we present the methodological approach of a multifaceted quality improvement intervention aiming to improve quality of care in primary care, properly tailored for a country such as Cyprus where general practice is currently seeking recognition.