Relationship between perception of healthcare services and health-related quality of life in mothers of children with disabilities.
Daisuke Kazama, Kensuke Shimizu, Tomoyuki Asakura and 1 others
Mothers of children with disabilities scored below the national average on physical and mental health.
Their perception of how well services met their family's needs was only weakly linked to mental health and not linked to physical health.
Key findings
1No significant correlations were found between the physical component summary (PCS) score and any of the five family-centered care perception domains.
2The mental component summary (MCS) showed weak positive correlations with all five perception domains, ranging from r = 0.17 (providing general information) to r = 0.24 (coordinated and comprehensive care).
3In multiple regression, the interaction between 'providing general information' and number of nighttime awakenings was a significant moderator for PCS (R² = 0.06, p < 0.05). No significant moderator was identified for MCS.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Cross-sectional design: the correlations and the moderator cannot establish that perception of services causes changes in health, or vice versa. Only 174 of 506 families approached completed the survey (35% response rate), and the authors note that potential participants found the questionnaires too long. Single region (two cities in Gunma prefecture, Japan), so the findings may not generalise to other settings or countries. The authors could not collect data on financial situation, family support, or marital status because the questionnaires were already too long, limiting the range of factors they could examine. The MPOC-56 measures perception of the whole care team collectively; it does not isolate the contribution of any single discipline. The one significant moderator explained a small amount of variance (R² = 0.06), so its practical impact is uncertain.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the weak correlations (r = 0.17 to 0.24) as evidence that changing how services communicate will meaningfully improve mothers' health. The design is cross-sectional, so no direction of effect can be established, and the one moderator found had an R² of 0.06 for physical health scores, which is a small effect.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →