RESUMO
Inpatient hospice settings as facilities of health services are obliged to the quality assurance and internal quality development in Germany. The meaning of the patient's satisfaction as one of the indirect indicators for the judgement of nursing and care quality is indisputable by now. However, a subjective evaluation of the hospices by guests is practically and ethically problematic. An alternative approach is to investigate the views of bereaved relatives and close friends after the guest's death. The present article describes the development of an inventory for the evaluation of inpatient hospice settings from the bereaved relatives' point of view in order to examine the satisfaction of family members with the end-of-life care their loved ones received. With help of the inventory the question should be answered how family members judge the end-of-life care which was given to them and their late family members by the hospice. The construction of the questions results from the basis of existing concepts to the assessment of the end-of-life care and an analysis of all identified instruments to the evaluation of inpatient hospice settings from the perspective of bereaved relatives. The development of the questionnaire enclosed the formation of an item pool, the item choice, the critical discussion of the questions in the body of experts as well as a standardised and cognitive pretest beside a comprehensive literature research. A five-dimension questionnaire was developed that integrates physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and organisational aspects of the care at the end of life. The instrument encompasses 53 items, predominantly closed questions.