Abstract
Purpose: We examined the relationship between the experiences of home health care nursing recipients (clients) and their evaluations of the quality of the care that they received.
Method: A postal mail survey was conducted using our original questionnaire regarding clients' care experiences. The questionnaire was sent to 423 clients receiving nursing care in six Home-Visit Nursing Care Stations (Stations). In the questionnaire, clients or their family members were asked about the frequency of experience regarding each nursing care service and their subjective evaluation of the quality of their care experiences. Descriptive statistics and statistical relationships between clients' care experiences and quality evaluations were calculated. Two hundred and twenty-nine clients or family members from six Stations responded (response rate: 54.1%).
Results: The average age of the 229 clients was 77.7 years old; 54.1% of them were women and 10.5% of them were living alone. Clients and their family members constituted 16.2 percent and 73.8 percent of the participants, respectively. The average quality evaluation score was 9.1 (out of 10). The quality evaluation score was significantly higher in those who experienced the nurses' positive behaviors during every home visit than in those who experienced those behaviors less frequently or not at all.
Conclusion: Client experiences of care were related to their evaluation of the quality of care. Clients' care experience can be used to evaluate care quality by Stations. A common tool to evaluate clients' experience of home health care in Japan is needed for future studies.
