“I'm Satisfied … But”: Clients' and Families' Contingent Responses About Home Care

Abstract

Home care service organizations need a means of gaining useful feedback about satisfaction with care from clients and their families. Interviews were conducted with 82 older adult clients and 52 family members about their satisfaction with home care. A subgroup of participants (n = 39) provided "contingent" satisfaction responses. Contingent responses reflect the duality of perceptions that clients and families convey about services. Three themes emerged as critical to understanding these types of responses: adept versus inept staff, predictable versus precarious scheduling, and responsive versus restrictive care plans. Understanding the reasons for contingent responses could help home care agencies to target quality improvement initiatives for individual clients and families.

Impact of Home Care Management on the Involvement of Informal Caregivers by Formal Caregivers

“…Previous research has shown that the presence of multiple, successive formal caregivers hinders the development of a constructive relationship with clients (Byrne et al, 2011;Forbes et al, 2008;Gjevjon, Eika, et al, 2014;Gjevjon, Romøren, Kjøs, & Hellesø, 2013). Our findings suggest that the same applies to informal caregivers: in Agency A the high level of task differentiation resulted in a "succession of strangers" (Aronson, 2004) and decreased the chance of formal and informal caregivers meeting each other.…”

Experiences of being a family member to an older person with diabetes receiving home care services

“…Dale et al has also shown that patients value competence in home care services. In our material, positive descriptions of the home care services were commonly related to the skills and individual appearance of the formal care personnel, as was also shown by Byrne et al . In addition, Byrne et al highlight responsive care plans as important.…”

How home health nurses plan their work schedules: A qualitative descriptive study

“…Nurse participants described the scheduling challenges that required them to substitute another nurse for their patients. This led to disruptions in continuity of care that negatively impacted their relationship with patients, which is supported by previous research (Byrne et al., ; Leslie & Lonneman, ; Samia et al., ). This dimension of continuity, known as interpersonal or relational continuity , refers to a caring relationship that develops following the ongoing interaction between provider and patient, and is characterised by personal trust and responsibility (Haggerty et al., ; Saultz, ).…”