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Assessing quality of life and quality of care for palliative patients in a rural setting using a mixed method approach

University of British Columbia

This study explores how individuals living with a life limiting illness experienced and understood their quality of life and quality of care. Currently, few studies have explored the perspectives of palliative patients. The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth analysis of the experiences of palliative patients and their understanding of quality of life (QoL) and quality of care (QoC) within the context of the Shuswap region of British Columbia (B.C.). This study highlights challenges and strengths of rural palliative care with the goal of informing future policies, programming and services in the rural Shuswap and more broadly. A mixed method approach was used for this study; participants were interviewed twice using a semi-structured interview, completing the McGill Quality of Life Tool prior to the second interview. Interpretive description and descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. The findings of the study indicate that there is a highly inter-connected relationship between the quality of life (QoL) and quality of care (QoC) for the Shuswap rural palliative patients. The findings also indicate that overall the palliative patients living in the rural Shuswap are pleased with their QoL and QoC; however, all participants expressed concerns regarding the coordination of their health care services. Many participants attended multiple health care appointments per week and would like to see their appointments more coordinated. In addition, all of the participants shared their strong desire to remain as independent as possible. Therefore, this study’s findings suggest that care needs to be more coordinated from a patient centred perspective which could result in a higher QoL for patients

Text

2014-12-09

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/51418

Social Work

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/