End-of-Life Care Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Ghent University, Brussels, Belgium.
European Palliative Care Research Centre (PRC), Department of Oncology, Oslo University Hospital and Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Support Care Cancer. 2023 Jul 31;31(8):499. doi: 10.1007/s00520-023-07964-4.
Routinely assessing quality of life (QoL) of patients with cancer is crucial for improving patient-centred cancer care. However, little is known about whether or how cancer centres assess QoL for clinical practice or for research purposes. Therefore, our study aimed to investigate if QoL data is collected and if so, how and for what purposes.
We conducted a cross-sectional survey study among 32 cancer centres in Europe and Canada. Centre representatives identified persons who they judged to have sufficient insight into QoL data collections in their wards to complete the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the information on QoL assessment and documentation.
There were 20 (62.5%) responding cancer centres. In total, 30 questionnaires were completed, of which 13 were completed for cancer wards and 17 for palliative care wards. We found that 23.1% and 38.5% of the cancer wards routinely assessed QoL among inpatients and outpatients with cancer, respectively, whereas, in palliative care wards, 52.9% assessed QoL for outpatients with cancer and 70.6% for the inpatients. Wide variabilities were observed between the cancer centres in how, how often, when and which instruments they used to assess QoL.
A sizable proportion of the cancer wards, especially, and palliative care wards apparently does not routinely assess patients' QoL, and we found wide variabilities between the cancer centres in how they do it. To promote routine assessment of patients' QoL, we proposed several actions, such as addressing barriers to implementing patient-reported outcome measures through innovative e-health platforms.
定期评估癌症患者的生活质量（QoL）对于改善以患者为中心的癌症护理至关重要。然而，对于癌症中心是否以及如何为临床实践或研究目的评估 QoL 知之甚少。因此，我们的研究旨在调查是否收集 QoL 数据，如果是，如何以及出于何种目的收集。
我们在欧洲和加拿大的 32 家癌症中心进行了横断面调查研究。中心代表确定了他们认为对病房 QoL 数据收集有足够了解的人员来完成调查。使用描述性统计来总结 QoL 评估和记录的信息。
有 20 家（62.5%）回应的癌症中心。共有 30 份问卷完成，其中 13 份为癌症病房填写，17 份为姑息治疗病房填写。我们发现，分别有 23.1%和 38.5%的癌症病房常规评估癌症住院患者和门诊患者的 QoL，而姑息治疗病房中，52.9%评估癌症门诊患者的 QoL，70.6%评估癌症住院患者的 QoL。在如何、如何频繁、何时以及使用哪些工具来评估 QoL 方面，癌症中心之间存在很大的差异。
相当一部分癌症病房，尤其是姑息治疗病房，显然没有常规评估患者的 QoL，我们发现癌症中心之间在如何进行评估方面存在很大差异。为了促进患者 QoL 的常规评估，我们提出了一些措施，例如通过创新的电子健康平台解决实施患者报告结果测量的障碍。
