title: Measuring the regret of bereaved family members regarding the decision to admit cancer patients to palliative care units.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purposes of this study were to develop a bereaved family regret scale measuring decision-related regret of family members about the admission of cancer patients to palliative care units (PCUs) and to examine the validity and reliability of this scale.
  
  
  METHODS
  Bereaved families of cancer patients who had died in one regional cancer center from September 2004 to February 2006 received a cross-sectional questionnaire by mail. The questionnaire contained seven items pertaining to decision-related regret about the patient's admission to the PCU, the Care Evaluation Scale (CES), an overall care satisfaction scale, and a health-related quality-of-life (QOL) scale (SF-8). One month after receiving a completed questionnaire, we conducted a retest with the respondent.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 216 questionnaires successfully mailed to the bereaved families, we received 137 questionnaires and were able to analyze the responses for 127 of them, as the other 10 had missing data. By exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, we identified two key factors: intrusive thoughts of regret and decisional regret. This scale had sufficient convergent validity with CES, overall care satisfaction, SF-8, sufficient internal consistency, and acceptable test-retest reliability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We have developed and validated a new regret scale for bereaved family members, which can measure their intensity of regret and their self-evaluation about their decision to admit their loved ones to PCUs.
authors.affiliation: Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences, and Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. mariko@rinro.hus.osaka-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shiozaki
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hirai
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dohke
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Morita
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miyashita
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tsuneto
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shima
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Uchitomi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002173:Cancer Care Facilities; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003657:Decision Making; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000523:psychology*; D010343:Patient Admission; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires