Quality of death among hospice decedents: Proxy observations from a survey of community-dwelling adults in the contiguous United States.

HOSPICE care; ATTITUDE (Psychology); CHI-squared test; FISHER exact test; INTERVIEWING; MEDICAL personnel; SCIENTIFIC observation; PATIENTS; RESEARCH funding; STATISTICAL sampling; SCALE analysis (Psychology); SURVEYS; ATTITUDES toward death; INDEPENDENT living; CROSS-sectional method; DATA analysis software; PATIENTS' attitudes; FAMILY attitudes; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; POPULATION-based case control; PSYCHOLOGY

This study examines hospice service experience and quality of death. A survey of 123 community-dwelling adults in the United States found that physical comfort, pain-free, and spiritual peace were more important to respondents reporting a personal experience with hospice. A “good death” was associated with older patients who died at home, and respondent satisfaction with hospice service. A “good death” was mapped as 29 nodes and 79 links using semantic network analysis. Three subjects (patient, family, hospice), three timeframes (end-of-life, moment of dying, death), and four central causes (home, peaceful, pain-free, and expected) were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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