Family-driven quality improvement in inpatient end-of-life care

To enhance end-of-life care in a community hospital system, an interdisciplinary team designed and implemented a mail survey to obtain feedback from families of inpatients who died. The 855 completed surveys (a 31% response rate) demonstrate that bereaved families are willing to give feedback on care received from nurses and physicians and attention paid to the personal needs of patients and families. The team used families' feedback to shape quality improvement initiatives and focused on questions with comparatively lower scores: physician communication, physician compassion, and family understanding of what to expect as their loved one approached the end of life.