title: [Patient-hospital relationship and quality of life in elderly patients with hypertension].
abstract: To investigate the influence of the patient-hospital relationship on the quality of life (QOL) in elderly patients with hypertension, we developed a comprehensive scale for assessing the patient-hospital relationship. In the first phase, an original questionnaire consisting of 40 items was designed under five fields for global assessment of the concept. We administered this questionnaire to 715 patients with cardiovascular diseases. Variations in the scores were evaluated by factor analysis. Three factors that comprised the majority of variance were derived by principal components analysis and varimax transformation. These orthogonal factors were considered to reflect "convenience of the outpatient clinic", "satisfaction with clinical staff", and "communication with physician". We adopted three items under each of the three domains. Using this instrument, we assessed the patient-hospital relationship in 402 elderly outpatients with hypertension at 8 clinical centers. QOL was simultaneously assessed. A linear regression analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between patient-hospital relationship and QOL scores (R = 0.403, p < 0.0001), which means that patient-hospital relationship explained up to 16 percent of the total variability in scores on the Overall Quality of Life scale. Closer correlations were observed in patients aged 80 years or older, and in patients who lived alone. These results indicate that the patient-hospital relationship is one of the substantial factors determining QOL in elderly hypertensive patients, with more substantiality in older patients and patients leading solitary lives.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Adult Diseases Asahi Life foundation.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yoshida
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Matsuoka
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Omae
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fujii
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D015285:Hospital-Patient Relations; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life