The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the view on the personal encounter between staff and visitors in public libraries in order to detect possible differences between the two groups in order to see if the personal encounter as such could be used in order to market libraries. We believe that social competence must interact with the initial personal encounter in order for the visitor to experience the visit as positive. We have based the theoretical framework on Erving Goffman?s theory on social interaction, as well as on Christian Grönroos? theory on quality of service and marketing. We use the following questions: How do library staff view the personal encounter? How do library visitors view the personal encounter? How does the library staff?s treatment affect the visitor?s view of the library?Are there any differences in view between visitors and staff concerning the personal encounter? If so, what kind of differences are they? Using qualitative interviews, we have interviewed nine visitors and six staff members at two public libraries.

Background:Nurses can meet women who have been victims of abuse anywhere in the healthcare. Healthcare providers have a responsibility to these women, and it requires a broad range of skills to identify the women and thus be able to help them. It is important to see all patients as unique individuals and provide good care to maintain their specific needs. This paper was done to increase the understanding of nurses' experiences in the encounter with the battered woman.Aim:The aim of this study was to illustrate how nurses experience the encounter with the battered woman.Method:Literature review with both qualitative and quantitative studies. Nine articles were chosen to be read, reviewed and analyzed.Results:Three themes and ten subthemes appeared.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to survey what personal encounter at the library can signify, and to examine Swedish public libraries? policies for personal encounter. The posed questions are: What does personal encounter at the library signify? How are users and library staff represented in the collected policies? What do the policies say about digital encounter? 290 e-mail queries were sent to Swedish public libraries in May 2010. Of 140 responses, 107 stated that they did not have a written policy on personal encounter.

The idea of this study was to critically examine and account for the result found in scientific articles from databases. The aim of this literature review was to investi-gate how nurses can encounter a bereaved person in a crisis situation. Also the encounter of a person at risk of losing someone. Additionally, we investigated if the nursing staff fulfilled these needs. This literature review foremost addresses registered nurses.

This two years master?s thesis in Library and Information Sciences aims to investigate and put the services of 118100 Svar På Allt (SPA, an SMS mobile question and answer service) and Fråga biblioteket (FB, a library operated e-mail reference service) into the context of the reference encounter. Questions sent to SPA and their subsequent answers are analysed, and part of these questions are forwarded to FB for comparative studies. Both of the formats are compared to the reference encounter as a whole. The framing of the question originates in the assumption that there may be a need for further negotiation of the questions submitted to the aforementioned formats.

The overarching aim of this paper is to study the professional encounter in its complexity. The requirements for receiving welfare is set by the professional and it's the professionals decision if they are met in the proper manner. This makes the assessment of the clients conditions and the correctness of the assessment hence important. There are several levels which is necessary for the social worker to take into consideration.We have therefore made a socio-analysis by using a theoretical model of Johansson (2006) where he uses the Social Psychology of the encounter to create a model with four levels, which is always present in the professional encounter: structural, positional, relational, and experience level.  Our base was that the one responsible for handling these levels was the professional which led us to search for literature concerning the professional approach.Our study is formed as a qualitative case-study. Our empirical data consist of qualitative interviews with four social workers handling social allowance.The results shows that the complexity of the professional encounter requires a professional approach.

This two years master?s thesis in Library and Information Sciences aims to investigate and put the services of 118100 Svar På Allt (SPA, an SMS mobile question and answer service) and Fråga biblioteket (FB, a library operated e-mail reference service) into the context of the reference encounter. Questions sent to SPA and their subsequent answers are analysed, and part of these questions are forwarded to FB for comparative studies. Both of the formats are compared to the reference encounter as a whole. The framing of the question originates in the assumption that there may be a need for further negotiation of the questions submitted to the aforementioned formats.

As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service.

Background: Many Swedish inhabitants origin from different countries with different cultures that may show pain in other ways than Swedes. The Swedish law stress that nursing care should be done individually according to the patient's capabilities and needs. Aim and Method: The aim of this study was to describe nurses´ experiences of encounters with patients from other cultures with pain, and also their next of kin. Qualitative interviews were carried out with seven nurses. The interviews were analysed with the starting point in Giger and Davidhizars Transcultural Assessment Model and the six phenomena: communication, space, social organisation, time, environmental control and biological diversity.

Background: Homelessness is increasing, and health care is still difficult for many homeless people to achieve. If they get sick, it is both technically challenging to get a clinic they can go to, but also an economic problem because most of the homeless have no gainful employment. The fact that many homeless people experience bad attitudes of health care professionals is one reason why they don?t seek healthcare until an emergency arises. In the profession as a nurse, all people should be given equal treatment regardless of background.

Studiens syfte var att undersöka psykoterapeuters upplevelser av arbete med traumatiserade patienter från andra kulturer. Fokus låg på att undersöka de svårigheter och hinder som kan uppstå till följd av kulturella skillnader mellan terapeut och patient. Högre förekomst av psykiatriska tillstånd bland flyktingar i kombination med postmigratoriska sårbarhetsfaktorer ställer krav på terapeuters kompetens. Kvalitativ metod med semistrukturerade intervjuer användes. Data analyserades tematiskt utifrån ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv.

The aim of this study is to point out variations of practices in the relationship between professionals of service occupations and their clients. The material consists of four openly conducted thematic interviews with male professionals who work in the environment of their clients' homes.The main theoretical approach of this analysisis undertaken with ethnicity in mind.The practices identified aim to throw light on the boundaries between the differing cultures of professionals and their clients.The analytical termsboundary reduction and boundary maintenanceare used in this research.The two-stage analysis points out different practicesused, in chronological order, during contact between professionals and their clients. This is followed by a statement of the themes which connect, primarily fromthe professional perspective. The results indicate an intimate connection between intercultural and transcultural aspects through the use of cultural transparancy, which is a strategy connecting different roles, aswell as use of loophole tacticsthat afford the possibility of definingspace, place and relationship.It's illustrated how the professionals operate from "within the structures and worldview" of the client, and this analysis also reveals a glimpse of the potential for cultural changein the meeting between different cultures..

Bakgrund: Den ökade invandringen till Sverige har gjort att landet idag är ett mångkulturellt samhälle. Sjuksköterskan möter ofta patienter från andra kulturer. Dessa möten kan många gånger beskrivas i form av negativa vårderfarenheter för patienten. Syfte: Syftet var att belysa sjuksköterskans möte med patienter från andra kulturer. Metod: En litteraturöversikt med kvalitativ ansats genomfördes med nio vetenskapliga artiklar.

Traumatic deaths hit relatives hard and a fast and professional encounter can make crisis management easier. The purpose of this literature review is to find partly how relatives after traumatic deaths are taken care of and how nursing staff fulfil the relatives' needs and also how nurses prepare themselves before this encounter with the realatives. The method in this study consists of a literature review. This was done through critical examining a number of articles within this area. The result shows how a nurse could encounter relatives after traumatic deaths.

The purpose of this study was to look at the experiences of midwives in maternalhealth care encounters with non-european-born women and men, and to determine ifmidwives deem any special competence necessary to handle these encounters well.We gathered information by means of qualitative interviews and semi structuredquestions with eight midwives all of whom matched the inclusion criterias and gavetheir personal consent. Midwives from four district health care centers in Uppsalawere included. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed by means of qualitativecontent analysis.The results reveal the experiences from encounters with non-european patients to betwofold. On one hand the encounter is a positive, exiting experience with anopportunity to learn more about a foreign culture and exchange experiences. On theother hand complications can occur as patients may have unexpected expectationsregarding the health care, have great difficulties with the language or haveexperienced traumatizing incidents, all on top of coming to Sweden alone withoutrelatives.In the encounter with non-european-born patients the midwives consider it importantto have special competence in form of knowledge of other cultures and religions asthis provides a greater understanding of the reasoning behind the patients? decisions.Cultural competence is also important as it helps avoid inadvertently insulting thepatient during the encounter.The special competence held by the midwives has been attained from their basic andspecialist education as well as from self acquired experiences and interests.