Quality Measure Concepts for Inpatient Rehabilitation That Are Best Understood From the Patient's Perspective

The aim of this study was to identify inpatient rehabilitation quality-of-care concepts that are best understood from the patient perspective.

We conducted 12 focus groups with 95 former patients, caregivers, and rehabilitation clinicians and asked them to describe high-quality inpatient rehabilitation care.

We independently reviewed the focus group transcripts and then used an iterative process to identify the quality measure concepts identified by participants.

Based on participants' comments, we identified 18 quality measure concepts: respect and dignity, clinician communication with patient, clinician communication with family, organizational culture, clinician engagement with patient, clinician engagement with family, rehabilitation goals, staff expertise, responsiveness, patient safety, physical environment, care coordination, discharge planning, patient and family education, peer support, symptom management (pain, anxiety, fatigue, sadness), sleep, and functioning.

Rehabilitation nurses should be aware of the quality-of-care issues that are important to patients and their caregivers.

Important patient-reported domains of quality of care include interpersonal relationships, patient and family engagement, care planning and delivery, access to support, and quality of life.