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CAPC Palliative Care Discussion Forum
Data Collection and Measurement

Next Reply: Re:Survey Returns
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Post Survey Returns
Author: Webbdr
Date: Jun 26, 2008 12:49 pm
Our palliative care program has been consistantly getting low returns or few responses on our family surveys. We have tried mailing surveys and phone calls. The issues that we are running into are: pt family members do not remember who we are. Thus, we are not getting accurate feedback. Since we do not have our own unit and only provide palliative care inpt, they tend to confuse us with the care they recieved from the floor or with hospice. We are not sure how to solve this problem especially since when we are involved it is a very senistive time and most pts/families do not remember most information we feed them. Has anyone had these challenges? If so, how did your program work through these challenges? And if you do not mind sharing, what is your process with family evaluations?
Replies: order by [Date] [Author] [Subject]
+ Re:Survey Returns (by sutton on 06/26/2008)
How far out from your contact with the patient/family are your surveys occurring?
Re:Survey Returns (by SharolHerr on 06/26/2008)
Mount Carmel sends surveys to families of patients that were on our acute palliative care units. Our return rate is about 48%. There are a couple of challenges: making sure that you have a "good" address for the patient's surrogate or family representative and making sure that you know who that person is. Registration process on admission can make a tremendous impact on this. We work with our marketing department and they support this process. They are sent out 4-6 weeks after the patient was on the unit. I do believe that having the unit provides clarity about services provided by palliative care. With that being said, we do see comments about care before patients were on the PC unit and comments about hospice.

Sharol Herr, RN, MSEd, CHPN
Nurse Clinician/Education Coordinator
Mt. Carmel Health Palliative Care Leadership Center
Columbus, Ohio
Re:Survey Returns (by bthorpe on 06/27/2008)
We also have a consultation service throughout the hospital. We send surveys to those families who are on the bereavement list (loved one was likely to die within 3 months of d/c). After the death, which is generally tracked through obituaries unless they died in the hospital, we send a bereavement card and then a survey about 1 week later. We do have a data base with contact info and I try to track down a contact address through the internet directory if we don't have an address on our data base. We get a low return on surveys too. It looks like having a pc unit does make a big difference. I think calling the contact after the death to check in with how they are doing would problably increase our returns. Bev Thorpe, LCSW Pain and Palliative Care Maine Medical Center Portland Maine

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