Perceptions of the process of care among caregivers and care recipients in Dementia Care Networks

The Dementia Care Networks Study investigated 4 community-based, not-for-profit dementia care networks in Ontario, Canada. Investigators examined whether sociodemographic and health characteristics, type of support network, and amount of service use among care recipients and caregivers (n = 267 dyads) were associated with experiences with care processes. The process-of-care constructs were: family physicians' awareness of services; experiences with health care workers, and assessment and placement activities. The findings highlighted that family physicians' understanding of dementia and their ability to work with the dyad to become aware of and accept services, was an important component in the dyad's satisfaction. If caregivers received home support and the care recipients received emotional support from their social support network, they were more likely to be satisfied with their experiences with health care workers. In summary, increased awareness and provision of services were associated with more positive perceptions of network effectiveness. © 2007 Sage Publications.

Reaching common ground:A patient-family-based conceptual framework of quality EOL care

Improvement in the quality of end-of-life (EOL) care is a priority health care issue since serious deficiencies in quality of care have been reported across care settings. Increasing pressure is now focused on Canadian health care organizations to be accountable for the quality of palliative and EOL care delivered. Numerous domains of quality EOL care upon which to create accountability frameworks are now published, with some derived from the patient/family perspective. There is a need to reach common ground on the domains of quality EOL care valued by patients and families in order to develop consistent performance measures and set priorities for health care improvement. This paper describes a meta-synthesis study to develop a common conceptual framework of quality EOL care integrating attributes of quality valued by patients and their families. © 2005 Centre for Bioethics, IRCM.