Patient-centred outcome measures (PCOMs) are used in cancer and in survivorship and palliative care for research, education, clinical audit, monitoring and directly in clinical practice. The use of outcome measures in research is quite well established, although there remain questions about the best timing of measurement in studies, and ensuring measures are able to capture the changes important to patients, families and clinicians.
In clinical care outcome measures can be used to screen for problems, such as symptoms, improve communication, monitor change and provide evidence of benefit of the service. Recording information at one point in time (such as first assessment) gives an understanding of the needs of patients and families. Repeated assessments enable change to be monitored.
This presentation will consider the issues in using measures during cancer care and into survivorship, using as a case example our work in developing and validating a clinical measure for use in myeloma – the MY-POS. It will consider how the views of patients and families changed content and how this and other measures may be integrated into practice to screen for needs, improve care and communication. It will give examples of how the Patient Outcome Scale (a version of POS) has been revised for use at different time points and in different ways. Finally it will consider the issues of implementing measures into clinical practice to improve care.