A COMPARISON OF SERVICE AND NON-SERVICE DETERMINANTS OF CARERS' SATISFACTION WITH PALLIATiVE CARE SERVICES

The association between carers' satisfaction with services delivered by district nurses (DNs), general practitioners (GPs), hospital doctors (HDs), and the health and social services in general (HSS), and various service and non-service variables was examined to assess whether satisfaction is more a reflection of the service characteristics, the non-service related factors, or attributable equally to both. Analysis was undertaken on a sub-sample of the "Regional Study of Care for the Dying", a retrospective survey assessing the perceptions of 3696 carers of services delivered to deceased in their last year of life. The sub-sample consisted of 1858 carers of deceased who were relatives or close friends/neighbours, whose deceased died from cancer, and whose death was not sudden. Satisfaction variables were derived from questions recorded in the survey. In bivariate and multivariate analysis, larger odds ratio were found in association with service than non-service variables. For example, high satisfaction with DNs was strongly associated with visiting the patient very frequently (OR= 10.8, 95% CI= 4.5-25.9); and the GP visiting 20 times or more (OR= 5.5, 95% CI= 3.6-8.5), and informing the carer of the diagnosis (0R 3.3, 95% CI= 2.3-4.7) were associated with high satisfaction with GPs.