How international is the International Journal for Quality in Health Care?

Abstract

The International Society for Quality in Health Care strives to ‘improve the quality and safety of healthcare worldwide through education, research, collaboration and the dissemination of evidence-based knowledge.’ The Society's Journal aims to contribute to this goal, particularly the dissemination of (worldwide) evidence-based knowledge. But do we really reflect an international perspective? This is not simply an issue of formal adhesion to the society's values or of political correctness. Today's world can be described as a ‘global village,’ and increasing contact between peoples of diverse origins and backgrounds can have considerable positive value for science and development [1]. A number of efforts have been developed to specifically encourage a more global in perspective in health research [2, 3]. In the hard sciences, it could be argued that the researcher's culture or country of origin is of little relevance, because the questions probed by the researchers are universal. Human DNA, for instance, will function much the same way regardless of social context or location. However, in the social sciences, the converse is true. Social constructs, such as quality of care, will vary from one society to the next. More importantly, health care itself is a human artefact and the ways in which health systems operate vary widely from one society to another. By facilitating the exchange of diverse ideas and experiences, we can contribute to a broader understanding of health care. But how well does the International Journal for Quality in Health Care do at contributing to international exchanges of ideas? In order to explore this question, we examined the distribution of countries of origin …