Objective : The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent the patients’ family, the nursing staff and the medical staff agreed on the evaluation of the daily life of the terminally ill patient who were cared for by their family, nurses and physicians at home, and to identify the state of the patients.
Methods : Data was collected by survey methodology. The questionnaire with the T. Noguchi’s tool was conducted to their family, the nursing and the medical staff who had jointly provided care for those patients. A total of 13 cases were analyzed.
Results : The findings are as follow : The degree of agreement among their family, the nursing and the medical staff was 76.9%. A half of the cases about which their family, nurses and physicians agreed to a high degree also were evaluated good state at the terminal stage. Of the 13 items of the tool, eleven maintained the state till terminal stage. Especially, sleep, pain, emotional stability, cleanliness, and right to choose were maintained.
Conclusion : What have turned out to be important are two. The first, the family should be included in the assessment and care planning in order to facilitate common understanding of the care goal among their family, the nursing and the medical staff. The second, their family, the nursing and the medical staff who collaborated in caring for the terminally ill homebound patients should first evaluate the quality of the care they provided separately and then minimize whatever differences among their family and two staffs in order to maximize the patient’s overall quality of terminal life. And health care providers were needed that they provide aggressive care for the domain where it is difficult to maintain the state. The view point of the evaluation for the daily life of the terminally ill patients was that the emphasis should be given on the ability of patients, not on the inability of them.
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