Anderson K L, Burckhardt C S
Seattle University School of Nursing, Washington 98122-4340, USA.
J Adv Nurs. 1999 Feb;29(2):298-306. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1999.00889.x.
If health care providers are to be able to document effective outcomes resulting from their interventions, they must first develop clear conceptual definitions for the outcomes, and then select measures that represent these concepts. No consensus exists in the health care disciplines about what quality of life is or how it should be measured. This paper presents historical and conceptual arguments in favour of a particular definition of quality of life, and distinguishes between quality of life and concepts often confused with it in the literature: symptoms, mood, functional status, and general health status. Whether quality of life is actually amenable to change as a result of health care interventions, and whether we ought to be trying to influence clients' quality of life is also discussed. We conclude that quality of life is an important outcome of health care intervention. However, traditional approaches to influencing quality of life may be misdirected, and the relative importance of our interventions to clients--whose opinions matter the most--ought to be put into perspective.
如果医疗服务提供者要能够记录其干预措施所产生的有效结果，他们必须首先为这些结果制定清晰的概念定义，然后选择代表这些概念的测量方法。在医疗保健学科中，对于生活质量是什么以及应如何衡量，尚无共识。本文提出了支持特定生活质量定义的历史和概念性论据，并区分了生活质量与文献中经常与之混淆的概念：症状、情绪、功能状态和总体健康状况。还讨论了生活质量是否真的会因医疗保健干预而发生变化，以及我们是否应该试图影响客户的生活质量。我们得出结论，生活质量是医疗保健干预的一个重要结果。然而，影响生活质量的传统方法可能方向有误，我们的干预措施对客户（其意见最为重要）的相对重要性应该得到正确看待。
