Caregivers' perceptions of the quality of care and services in short-term geriatric assessment units: Development and validation of a measurement tool

The goal of this study is to develop and validate a tool for measuring perc eptions of caregivers of the quality of care and services in Geriatric Asse ssment Units. It has been designed so as to reproduce the notion of quality for caregivers. The validation of the tool is based on analyses of respons es provided by caregivers (n = 274) to questions of perceived quality and t o a certain number of questions necessary for the evaluation of its metric qualities. The measurement scale developed includes 25 items and it demonst rates good internal consistency. The Alpha Cronbach coefficients are 0.95 f or the global index and they range from 0.88 to 0.91 on the sub-scales. The various analyses support a three-dimensional structure of the notion of qu ality for caregivers, explaining 66 per cent of the total variance. These d imensions are: "exchanges with professionals on the relative's condition,"' care given to a loved one," and "planning the discharge". It is hoped that this tool will promote the inclusion of the points of view of caregivers in the process of the improvement and assessment of quality.