DOI: 10.1097/01.COT.0000291850.57208.0a

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Issn Print: 0276-2234

Publication Date: 2004/04/25


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Putting Quality-of-Life Measures into Practice

Rabiya S. Tuma

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ORLANDO, FL—Psychosocial researchers, and much of the cancer community at large, appreciate at a conceptual level what quality-of-life (QoL) studies can reveal about how patients are coping with their disease and treatment. But even with such research in place, it isn't yet obvious to clinicians how to incorporate such data into their practice. So says Jeff Sloan, PhD, Chair of the Quality-of-Life Research Committee for the Center of Cancer Statistics Division of Health Sciences Research at the Mayo Clinic.
To help clinicians incorporate QoL data into their practice, Dr. Sloan and an informal group of about 30 other QoL researchers, who call themselves the Clinical Significance Consensus Meeting Group, started out in 2002 by publishing six papers in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings (April, May, and June issues). The papers addressed methodological issues around quality-of-life measurements.
“People said the papers were good in theory, but that we were still talking a little too isometrically for them. They asked us if we could translate that into information they could use in the clinic,” Dr. Sloan explained in an interview.
The Group then convened a meeting last fall in Phoenix, where they outlined five additional papers that will illustrate ways clinicians can use QoL data. On behalf of his colleagues, Dr. Sloan presented abbreviated outlines for each of the papers at the first annual meeting of the American Psychosocial Oncology Society, held here earlier this year. The expectation is to submit the papers for publication later this year.
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