IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v42y1996i5p721-731.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Determinants of informal caregivers' satisfaction with services for dying cancer patients

Author

Listed:
  • Fakhoury, Walid
  • McCarthy, Mark
  • Addington-Hall, Julia

Abstract

The association between bereaved informal caregivers' satisfaction with services delivered by district nurses, general practitioners and hospital doctors, and various service and non-service variables was examined to assess whether satisfaction is a reflection of service characteristics, non-service related factors, or attributable to both. Secondary analysis was undertaken on a sub-sample from the "Regional Study of Care for the Dying" (RSCD) in which bereaved relatives or friends of a random sample of deaths in 1990 in 20 health districts across England were interviewed some ten months after the death. 1858 relatives or close friends/neighbours of people who died from cancer were included in this analysis. Using multiple logistic regression, larger odds ratio were found in association with service than non-service variables. For example, high satisfaction with district nurses was strongly associated with visiting the patient very frequently (OR = 10.8, 95% CI = 4.5-25.9), while the GP visting 20 times or more (OR = 5.5, 95% CI = 3.6-8.5), and informing the informal caregiver of the diagnosis (OR = 3.3, 95% CI = 2.3-4.7) were associated with high satisfaction with GPs. However, some non-service variables were significantly associated with satisfaction. For instance, having no bereavement-related psychological problems was positively associated with high satisfaction with district nurses (OR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.6-3.4) and GPs (OR = 2.0, 95% CI = 1.4-2.8), while the informal caregiver perceiving caring as rewarding as opposed to a burden was positively associated with high satisfaction with district nurses (OR = 3.7, 95% CI = 1.8-7.5) and negatively associated with high satisfaction with hospital doctors (OR = 0.46, 95% CI = 0.24-0.86). The findings indicate that, in post-bereavement surveys evaluating services delivered to dying cancer patients, informal caregivers' satisfaction is mainly determined by service characteristics. However, attributes of both patients and informal caregivers also play an important role.

Suggested Citation

  • Fakhoury, Walid & McCarthy, Mark & Addington-Hall, Julia, 1996. "Determinants of informal caregivers' satisfaction with services for dying cancer patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 721-731, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:42:y:1996:i:5:p:721-731
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(95)00198-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:42:y:1996:i:5:p:721-731. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.