sively for research. More recently, there has been growing
interest in their possible contribution to routine clinical care.
Studies have shown that quality of life questionnaires can
be used in clinical practice to facilitate communication and
identify problems that otherwise might go undetected. In a
study by Detmar and colleagues,
chemotherapy patients
completed the questionnaires in the clinic before seeing
their physicians, so that the physicians had the scores in
hand at the time when they met with the patients. Quality
of life issues were discussed more frequently by patients
who completed the questionnaires, as compared to patients
who did not. In addition, the physicians identified a larger
proportion of patients with moderate or severe health prob-
lems when they had the questionnaires. All physicians and
87% of the patients thought the questionnaires facilitated
communication and should continue to be used.
In another
study, Velikova and colleagues tested computerized admin-
istration of quality of life instruments in oncology clinical
practice. This prospective study (28 medical oncologists
and 286 patients with cancer) demonstrated that providing
quality of life data to clinicians resulted in a more frequent
discussion of symptoms, without prolonging the clinical
encounter. Improvement of quality of life was associated
with the use of quality of life data, discussion of pain, and
role function. These studies demonstrate that quality of life
instruments can provide useful additional information to
clinicians, increase the efficiency of the clinical encounter,
and result in improved outcomes for patients. Halyard and
Ferrans
recently published guidelines for using quality of
life instruments in oncology clinical practice.