[The development of the life evaluation questionnaire for hemodialysis patients].

OBJECTIVE

Existing quality of life measures fail to incorporate patients' own understanding of evaluation of life following the diagnosis of end stage renal failure (ESRF). Previous qualitative research has identified ways of evaluating life that have not been captured by existing quantitative research and that can be possible targets for clinical practice. Nonetheless, quantification is necessary if clinicians are to be informed of potentially important ways of evaluating life. It is also necessary to devise patient-derived measures of quality of life if the aim is also to monitor improvement in ways of evaluating life following interventions devised to change them.

METHOD

Three studies were carried out. In the first two, the ways of evaluating life that were previously identified were quantified, a questionnaire that measures ways of evaluating life was developed, and the clinical utility of this questionnaire was examined in a sample of 156 hemodialysis patients. In the third study the predictive validity of this questionnaire was examined in a sample of 153 hemodialysis patients.

RESULTS

The findings identified a number of targets for clinical practice. These included feeling unable to 'get round' limitations, mixed negative feelings about caregivers, and failure to find something positive about ESRF The newly developed 3 subscales of life evaluation were internally consistent. The findings also show that thes subscales had construct and predictive validity.

CONCLUSION

The present studies provide a disease-specific life evaluation questionnaire consisting of 3 subscale for use in hemodialysis patients that can supplement existing generic quality of life measures.