A telephone survey of the provision of palliative day care services

A telephone survey was conducted to gather preliminary data in order to identify the nature of palliative day care provision in the UK. A random sample of 131 day centres was taken from 17 regional locations in the UK, providing a 60% representation out of a total of 215 adult day care facilities.
A combination of a structured and semistructured interview schedule was used to collect the data. The results obtained from this preliminary survey provided further information on the nature, range, and types of services that are currently provided by UK palliative day care centres; management and organizational issues; and the nature of common problems and care issues of patients attending day centres. Data from the study provided further information on the current status of day care services. The implications for future evaluative research are discussed, particularly in the area of the impact and cost-effectiveness of day care services and the potential work with regard to different models of service provision.