This study examines the difference between the quality of care patients receive with palliative care consult services and the palliative care unit. This may help researchers learn how improvements can be made to the level of care provided in the palliative care unit and improve satisfaction with quality of care by patients and caregivers.
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: I. To determine the change of satisfaction with quality of care after an experience on the palliative care unit (PCU) for both patients and caregivers, as determined by the global rating survey. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: I. To determine the change of the quality of care as determined by patients and caregivers utilizing validated assessment tools and a global rating survey assessing different aspects of care after PCU. II. To determine domains of care that are strongly or poorly provided by the PCU, as reported by patient and caregiver opinions on quality of care. III. To determine which demographic features (i.e. cancer diagnosis; time since diagnosis; reason for transfer to the PCU; gender; caregiver ethnic group; comfort with the idea of transfer to the PCU; Memorial Delirium Assessment Scale \[MDAS\], Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale \[ESAS\], and distress thermometer) may correlate with patient and caregiver satisfaction with PCU care measured by global survey and with the family satisfaction with end-of-life care. OUTLINE: Patients and caregivers complete surveys over 5-10 minutes before and after care in the PCU.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
35
Complete survey
M D Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, Texas, United States
Relative satisfaction rate
Defined as the percentage of patients that answered "Better" and "Much Better" to the first question in the global rating on "overall care". The relative satisfaction rate after palliative care unit (PCU) care in patients or caregivers will be estimated with 95% confidence interval.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
Patient Global Survey/Caregiver Global Survey
Assessed by Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS), Memorial Delirium Assessment Scale (MDAS) distress thermometer will be summarized by descriptive analysis and/or tabulation.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
Distress thermometer
Measured by Family Satisfaction with end-of-life care will be summarized descriptively for each time point and may be compared within patients and within caregivers before and after the PCU by Wilcoxon signed-rank test, when the outcome is on Likert ordinal scales with 3, 5 levels or even 10 levels and the differences in the scales can be considered as continuous variables.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
Patients' and caregivers' opinions on quality of care
Measured by Family Satisfaction with end-of-life care will be summarized descriptively for each time point and may be compared within patients and within caregivers before and after the PCU by Wilcoxon signed-rank test, when the outcome is on Likert ordinal scales with 3, 5 levels or even 10 levels and the differences in the scales can be considered as continuous variables.
Time frame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
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