Measurement of fatigue in people with cancer.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the quality of existing instruments measuring cancer-related fatigue (CRF).

DATA SOURCES

Nursing and medical literature.

DATA SYNTHESIS

Although fatigue is highly prevalent among patients with cancer and adversely affects their quality of life, CRF often is unrecognized and untreated. The instruments available to measure CRF have numerous limitations. Many have been generated from investigators' observations, not actual experiences described by patients. Others operationalize different definitions of fatigue or differ in dimensionality, which leads to limited reliability and validity testing.

CONCLUSIONS

All of the instruments in this review need further study of their psychometric properties. Qualitative studies of CRF from the patients' perspective are needed to develop better instruments.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE

Nurses need to increase their knowledge of assessing CRF to intervene and improve the quality of life for patients with cancer.