Psychological evaluation of 24-hour home nursing care: application of an analytic hierarchy process to improve quality of life.

Twenty-four-hour home nursing care services for patients with severe diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis have been started in Japan. To improve the quality of home nursing care as well as the patients quality of life (QOL), we undertook a psychological evaluation of the care services. An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to the psychological evaluation. Forty-eight staff replied to our questionnaire, of which twenty-nine staff showed a consistency index of less than 0.1. In the first hierarchy, the intensities of importance were 0.436 for "quality of care", 0.351 for "staff awareness", and 0.213 for "economic efficiency". Most staff appeared to feel that the relationships among patients, their families, and staffs were the most important criteria. While many staff might have increased their "physical profit" and "burden", the intensities of importance for those criteria were low.