Patient-centred outcome measures have been playing an increasingly important role in evidence based medicine as a way to understand the effects of health interventions on patients and families. However, their routine use in practice has been slow and difficult to implement.
Background
The importance of using questionnaires to understand the effect of health interventions has been growing and is increasingly recognised as a fundamental component of evidence based medicine. Specifically, questionnaires which are filled by the patient, who is the person receiving those interventions. In palliative care, it is equally important to learn not just about physical effects, but also, psychological, existential, emotional and practical ones. These questionnaires help shape patient centred care because they focus on their individual needs and can also help improve the quality of the care provided.
Implementing these measures in palliative care clinical practice, in different settings, is critical but evidence shows that it has not been done widely. It is therefore imperative to learn what are the facilitators and barriers related to implementing these questionnaires in clinical practice.
We updated a systematic review we conducted ten years ago on facilitators, barriers and lessons learned on implementing patient reported outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice. We additionally looked for what were the implementation models used, what were the costs of implementing those measures and also focused on questionnaires filled by family members and healthcare professionals, if the patient was not able to filled them.
Project Aims
We updated a systematic review we conducted 9 years ago which had the following objectives:
- To identify the facilitators to implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice
- To identify the barriers to implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice
- To identify lessons learned on to implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice
- To identify the patient centred outcome measures used
In this study we aimed to add the following objectives:
- To identify the implementation models used when implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice
- To identify what implementation outcomes were measured and how, when implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice
- To assess costs of to implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice
- To update the recommendations from the original paper when implementing patient centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice to inform the implementation process in palliative care clinical practice for stakeholders at different levels.
Project Activity
Systematic literature review and narrative synthesis.
Anticipated Outputs
Peer reviewed journal publication
Who was involved?
- Barbara Antunes, University of Cambridge
- Stephen Barclay, University of Cambridge
- Claudia Bausewein, Munich University
- Kathy Eagar, University of Wollongong, Australia
- Richard Harding, KCL London
- Fliss Murtagh, Hull York Medical School
Papers/Resources
Antunes B, Harding R, Higginson IJ; EUROIMPACT. Implementing patient-reported
outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice: a systematic review of facilitators
and barriers.
Contact us
Stephen Barclay, University of Cambridge
