Quality of Care and Job Satisfaction in the European Home Care Setting: Research Protocol

INTRODUCTION: Since the European population is ageing, a growing number of elderly will need home care. Consequently, high quality home care for the elderly remains an important challenge. Job satisfaction among care professionals is regarded as an important aspect of the quality of home care. AIM: This paper describes a research protocol to identify elements that have an impact on job satisfaction among care professionals and on quality of care for older people in the home care setting of six European countries. METHODS: Data on elements at the macro-level (policy), meso-level (care organisations) and micro-level (clients) are of importance in determining job satisfaction and quality of care. Macro-level indicators will be identified in a previously published literature review. At meso- and micro-level, data will be collected by means of two questionnaires utilsed with both care organisations and care professionals, and by means of interRAI Home Care assessments of clients. The client assessments will be used to calculate quality of care indicators. Subsequently, data will be analysed by means of linear and stepwise multiple regression analyses, correlations and multilevel techniques. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION: These results can guide health care policy makers in their decision making process in order to increase the quality of home care in their organisation, in their country or in Europe.