Serious illness care quality during COVID-19: Identifying improvement opportunities in narrative reports from a National Bereaved Family Survey.
Palliat Med
; 37(7): 1025-1033, 2023 Jul.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2323255
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
COVID-19 significantly impacted care delivery to seriously ill patients, especially around including family and caregivers in patient care.AIM:
Based on routinely collected bereaved family reports, actionable practices were identified to maintain and improve care in the last month of life, with potential application to all seriously ill patients.DESIGN:
The Veterans Health Administration's Bereaved Family Survey is used nationally to gather routine feedback from families and caregivers of recent in-patient decedents; the survey includes multiple structured items as well as space for open narrative responses. The responses were analyzed using qualitative content analysis with dual review. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS:
Between February 2020 and March 2021, there were 5372 responses to the free response questions of which 1000 (18.6%) responses were randomly selected. The 445 (44.5%) responses from 377 unique individuals included actionable practices.RESULTS:
Bereaved family members and caregivers identified four opportunities with a total of 32 actionable practices. Opportunity 1 Facilitate the use of video communication, included four actionable practices. Opportunity 2 Provide timely and accurate responses to family concerns, included 17 actionable practices. Opportunity 3 Accommodate family/caregiver visitation, included eight actionable practices. Opportunity 4 Offer physical presence to the patient when family/caregivers are unable to visit, included three actionable practices.CONCLUSION:
The findings from this quality improvement project are applicable during a pandemic, but also translate to improving the care of seriously ill patients in other circumstances, such as when family members or caregivers are geographically distant from a loved one during the last weeks of life.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Terminal Care
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Qualitative research
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Palliat Med
Journal subject:
Health Services
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
02692163231175693
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