Using data from a study of Devillé et al. [18] we identified the zip codes of the ‘deprived’ areas. We included all practices located in these areas and sent questionnaires to the 587 general practitioners working in these practices. General practitioners who did not respond received a reminder. In order to find Decitabine nmr nurses with experience of these groups in the 30 relevant areas, we asked for the assistance of staff members of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the 31 home
care organizations who supplied home care in these 30 areas. Eight of the 31 organizations abstained from cooperation for several reasons. These included ‘no time’ or ‘limited experience with terminal patients within these migrant groups’. We asked the staff members to distribute questionnaires among all nurses who, according to them, would have experience with terminally ill Turkish or Moroccan patients. The staff members could get Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical as many questionnaires as they thought they could successfully distribute. In 23
of the 31 home care organizations, staff agreed to help us disseminate our questionnaires. The helpful staff of these 23 home care organizations had no exact information as to which of their nurses had recently cared for one or Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical more Turkish or Moroccan terminally ill clients. They therefore made an estimation of the amount of questionnaires to be successfully distributed. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Some of the organizations sent the questionnaires they could not distribute back to the researchers, whereas others may have kept the questionnaires without distributing them fully. However, we checked twice if they needed additional questionnaires to distribute. In total we sent 330 questionnaires to the
cooperating organizations. Measures The questionnaire focussed on characteristics of the respondent (GP or nurse) and their general experiences and perceptions regarding care for Turkish and Moroccan terminally ill patients. The questionnaire contained three questions about the respondent (sex, age and nationality) and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical five questions about the work setting (amount of years in function, workload, region, function and number of Turkish or Moroccan terminally ill patients cared for). In addition, 15 questions were included about the respondents last Turkish or Moroccan terminally ill patient as well as 7 open and 37 closed Vasopressin Receptor questions about these patients’ needs and their barriers to the use of home care, about contacts and communication with them and about the cooperation with other professionals around the care for these patients. In some of the open questions we asked the GPs and nurses to report in detail about their experiences with their last terminally ill Turkish or Moroccan patient in the previous four years. This period seemed most appropriate for our purpose: it enabled us to include enough cases and avoid including cases whose details might be forgotten.