An Exploration of Questions from Informal Family Caregivers of Cancer Patients in Home Hospice (RP418)

Objectives: • Identify the domains of care as outlined by the National Consensus Panel Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care caregivers ask the majority of questions in a home hospice visit. • Recognize and discuss how to use questions from the informal caregiver in the home hospice environment to reveal caregiver misunderstandings and level of comprehension about the patient's plan of care. •Determine which domains of care caregivers state uncertainty and confusion yet caregivers do not ask questions in these areas.  Importance: With a growing number of people choosing home hospice care after a terminal cancer diagnosis, communication between the hospice nurse and the informal caregiver is at the forefront of hospice care. Expert communication is vital to convey not only how to carry out the plan of care but also how assess family caregiver's understanding that plan.  Objective(s): The aim of this project was to explore the scope of questions from caregivers of cancer patients in home hospice by categorizing caregiver questions using the National Consensus Panel Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care (NCP) as a template with the addition of the domain Relationship Building to be inclusive of all therapeutic communication.  Method(s): This was a secondary analysis of audio recordings of home hospice nurse visits (N= 32 visits). Coding was conducted in two waves using NVivo 11 software; first a deductive content analytic process was applied to caregiver questions to identify the NCP care domain; next questions were inductively coded into emerging subcategories.  Results: Questions (N = 224) from caregivers were found in four domains; Physical Aspect of Care (149), Care of the Imminently Dying (37), Relationship Building (36), and Cultural (1). In the domain, Physical Aspect of Care, Medication Management (43%) was the most common subcategory. In Relationship Building, 92% of questions focused on Personal Information about the nurse. In the domain, Care of the Imminently Dying, questions about Symptoms to Recognize (that death was imminent) (57%) were the most common.  Conclusions: Results suggest caregivers struggle with basic information acquisition and retention concerning the care of patient and what to expect as the patient deteriorates.  Impact: Caregivers have unmet educational needs in areas of medication management and need further explanation of what future care of the patient entails as the patient deteriorates. Future research is needed to explore how to elicit questions from domains caregivers have stated uncertainty in, yet tend to avoid, such as cultural and spiritual aspects of care.