Using the measure of processes of care with parents of children hospitalized for head injury

Despite recommendations that rehabilitation programs adopt family/patient satisfaction as an outcome measure, few studies have addressed satisfaction with services for children with head injury. This report describes our use of the Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC) to document the perceptions of care of parents whose children were hospitalized with a head injury and to compare parental perceptions of care with those of the service providers (n = 16). The MPOC is a self-administered questionnaire consisting of 56 items, each of which is included in one of five care-giving scales: (1) enabling and partnership; (2) providing general information; (3) providing specific information about the child; (4) coordinated and comprehensive care; (5) respectful and supportive care. The MPOC was mailed to parents of children with a head injury who were consecutively admitted to a pediatric trauma center during a 5-mo period. The results, based on the responses of 73 parents (response rate, 59.3%), revealed that the needs of these parents are being met to varying degrees. Mean scores for the five scales ranged from 4.6 to 6.4 and from 5.9 to 6.6 for parents and providers, respectively. Significant differences between the groups were found for two scales: providing general and specific information. Because of the low percentage of valid responses for three of the five scales, the MPOC appears to be an inappropriate tool for use with parents of children with mild head injury (89%) in the acute care setting. The MPOC, however, is applicable for parents of children who are more severely injured (e.g., average hospital stay, 9 days) and is informative for rehabilitation service providers.