Last week saw the launch of the results of the latest survey undertaken on behalf of the Irish Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare into patient perception of the quality of health care. Interestingly, and contrary to much of the media coverage of this issue, the results of the 2002 survey are positive in many respects. Patients perceive the quality of the care and service received to be very high. Some of the findings mentioned in the survey include: the fact that 92% of patients reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the overall quality of care they received during their stay in hospital; 85% of patients reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the standard of service they received in the accident and emergency department and 90% were dealt with within three hours; 90% of respondents indicated that the explanations given to them by doctors about their condition and treatment were either very easy or fairly easy to understand; 90% of patients who experienced a procedure reported having it adequately explained to them; and 92% of patients expressed a high level of overall satisfaction with the hotel aspects of the hospital's service. Against a background of 95% of patients declaring themselves as being generally satisfied, the challenge now is to build on our successes and address those areas that require improvement.