Quality of life issues identified by palliative care clients using two tools

Abstract

Reported are issues impacting upon the Quality of Life (QoL) of 59 palliative care clients within a district nursing service. These issues reinforce the emerging conceptualisation of QoL as being subjective and multidimensional. The issues were identified during a trial of two QoL assessment and measurement tools, the Client Generated Index (CGI) and the McGill Quality of Life (MQOL). In this era of considerable concern about QoL for the terminally ill, the article's intent is to present the QoL issues identfied, the grades of impact and priority for improvement of the issues according to the clients, and to discuss these aspects. This information can inform the assessment of palliative care clients (the CGI tool was found ideal for such an assessment), and may also inform further research on the QoL of palliative care clients.

Using a personalized measure (Patient Generated Index (PGI)) to identify what matters to people with cancer

“…The PGI, a personalized measure to identify the impact of specific conditions on QOL [7], has been used and validated in both noncancer populations [7,18] and a variety of cancer populations [9,10,[19][20][21].…”

Validity of the Patient Generated Index as a Quality-of-Life Measure in Radiation Oncology

“…The PGI has been used primarily in noncancerrelated chronic illness populations outside the United States, with only three studies involving patients with cancer (Camilleri-Brennan et al, 2002;Lewis et al, 2002;Llewellyn et al, 2006). Construct validity of the PGI has been evaluated by correlations with other HRQOL measurements, most commonly the SF-36 ® , SF-12 ® , and the QLQ-C30.…”

“…The third study involved patients receiving palliative care services (Lewis et al, 2002). The authors reported a patient preference for the PGI as opposed to the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (Cohen, Mount, Strobel, & Bui, 1995).…”

“…The PGI directs respondents to define and rate their own HRQOL by identifying important areas of life affected by illness and treatment, reporting the degree of impact during the past week for each area, and rating each area in terms of importance to quality of life. Use of the PGI in patients with cancer is minimal to date (Camilleri-Brennan, Ruta, & Steele, 2002;Lewis et al, 2002;Llewellyn, McGurk, & Weinman, 2006), with no reported studies of use in radiation oncology. The purpose of the current study was to examine the psychometric properties of the PGI in a radiation oncology patient population.…”