Private or shared room? A nationwide questionnaire survey on bereaved family members' perceptions of where patients spend their last days

Background: Where patients receive end-of-life care influences their quality of life.

Objectives: To clarify the effects of staying in a private or shared room in inpatient hospices.

Design: A part of a Japanese multicenter survey to evaluate the quality of end-of-life care.

Setting/participants: 779 bereaved families whose relatives who died from cancer in inpatient hospices.

Measurements: The primary outcome was family-perceived need for improvement in environment-related professional care. Secondary end-points included: family satisfaction, environment-related family perception, and quality of death and dying (Good Death Inventory: GDI).

Results: 574 responded (73.7%). 300 patients were in a private room from admission to discharge, 47 were in a shared room less than 50% of the time, and the remaining 85 were in a shared room 50% or more. There were significant differences in the need for improvement in shared (vs. private) rooms, and in favor of private rooms for: “privacy was protected,” “easy for visitors to visit,” “could discuss sensitive issues with medical staff without concern,” and “could visit at night.”, as well as “living in calm circumstances” and “spending enough time with family” of the GDI. Contrarily, significant differences were found in favor of shared rooms for: “the patient could interact with other patients.” There was no significant difference in family satisfaction and total score of GDI.

Conclusion: There are the advantages and disadvantages of spending one’s final days in a private or shared room, and adjusting rooms according to patients and their families’ values is necessary.