Elsevier

Annals of Oncology

Volume 26, Issue 9, September 2015, Pages 1846-1858
Annals of Oncology

reviews
Patient-reported outcomes in routine cancer clinical practice: a scoping review of use, impact on health outcomes, and implementation factors

https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdv181Get rights and content
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ABSTRACT

Background

This review focused on the identification of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) used in routine cancer clinical practice, the impact on patient, provider, and system outcomes, and the implementation factors influencing uptake.

Methods

A scoping review of the published health literature was conducted using empirical databases, namely, Ovid Medline (2003 to September 2013), CINAHL (2003–2013) and PsycINFO (2003–2013). Scoping reviews are systematic literature reviews in a broad topic area that provide relevant and quantified results about the knowledge available on a particular topic and aim to rapidly map and synthesize the evidence to emphasize what is known.

Results

From a total of 2447 unique publications, 30 articles that met eligibility criteria were reviewed. PRO use appears to be acceptable to patients, enables earlier detection of symptoms and may improve communication between clinicians and patients. However, the impact of routine PROMs collection on health outcomes is less clear and high-quality research is still warranted.

Conclusion

PROMs use in routine cancer clinical practice is growing with improvements on essential care processes shown but a number of implementation barriers must still be addressed. The lack of standardization in PROMs used in cancer organizations may make it difficult to use these data for quality monitoring in the future.

Key words

cancer
patient reported-outcomes
implementation barriers
routine practice
review

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