Understanding the association between employee satisfaction and family perceptions of the quality of care in hospice service delivery.

Families often draw their conclusions about the quality of care received by a family member during the last months of life from their interactions with professional caregivers. A more comprehensive understanding of how these relationships influence the care experience should include an investigation of the association between employee job satisfaction and family perception of the quality of care. This cross-sectional study investigated the association at a regional hospice. Using the Kendall's tau correlation, employee satisfaction scores for care teams trended toward a positive correlation with family overall satisfaction scores from the Family Evaluation of Hospice Care (tau=0.47, P=0.10). A trend for differences in employee satisfaction between the care teams to associate with differences in overall family perceptions of the quality of care also was found using the Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance (chi(2)(K-W)=9.236, P=0.075). Post hoc tests indicated that overall family perceptions of quality of care differed between the hospice's Residence Team and Non-Hospice Facilities Team. Finally, positive associations between employee satisfaction and the families' Intent to recommend hospice (tau=0.55, P=0.059) and Inform and communicate about patient (tau=0.55, P=0.059) were noted. Selected employee and family comments provide complementarity to further clarify or explain the respondent data. These results suggest that employee satisfaction is associated with family perceptions of the quality of hospice care. Opportunities for improving both employee job satisfaction and family perceptions of the quality of care are discussed.