RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The Palliative Network Bielefeld e. V. is a cooperation between family doctors and palliative care doctors based on the "agreement to implement palliative home care for terminally ill patients". The doctors are supported by coordinators, who regularly communicate with the patients resp. their family members and call in other co-operation partners (nursing services, ambulant hospice services, physiotherapists, psychologists or pastors) as required. METHOD: In order to collect data about the scope of services and the quality of work of the palliative network a questionnaire was sent to the family members 4 weeks after the patient had passed away. RESULTS: A total of 105 family members were asked, 94 completed questionnaires could be retrieved. 65% of the included patients died at home. Every other included patient had been taken care of for longer than a month. Of all professional groups who came into operation every day, nusring service and palliative nursing service were asked most frequently (52% resp. 41%), of those who came into operation several times a week, family doctors were asked most frequently (26%). 87% of the interviewees were "very content" or "content" with the coordinators, 73% resp. 74% with the family and palliative care doctors and 60% resp. with the nursing services and palliative nursing services. More than 90% of the interviewees stated that needs were realised and disorders were quickly acted on "at all times" or "predominantly". CONCLUSIONS: Correlations between the descriptive results could not be evaluated statistically because of sample size and incomplete frequency of answers. Nevertheless some trends can be shown. Overall contentment seems to increase as much as the percentage of patients who die at home and the duration of care in palliative network grow. The palliative network should be enhanced.
