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Do cancer centres and palliative care wards routinely measure patients’ quality of life? An international cross-sectional survey study

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Supportive Care in Cancer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Routinely assessing quality of life (QoL) of patients with cancer is crucial for improving patient-centred cancer care. However, little is known about whether or how cancer centres assess QoL for clinical practice or for research purposes. Therefore, our study aimed to investigate if QoL data is collected and if so, how and for what purposes.

Method

We conducted a cross-sectional survey study among 32 cancer centres in Europe and Canada. Centre representatives identified persons who they judged to have sufficient insight into QoL data collections in their wards to complete the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the information on QoL assessment and documentation.

Results

There were 20 (62.5%) responding cancer centres. In total, 30 questionnaires were completed, of which 13 were completed for cancer wards and 17 for palliative care wards. We found that 23.1% and 38.5% of the cancer wards routinely assessed QoL among inpatients and outpatients with cancer, respectively, whereas, in palliative care wards, 52.9% assessed QoL for outpatients with cancer and 70.6% for the inpatients. Wide variabilities were observed between the cancer centres in how, how often, when and which instruments they used to assess QoL.

Conclusion

A sizable proportion of the cancer wards, especially, and palliative care wards apparently does not routinely assess patients’ QoL, and we found wide variabilities between the cancer centres in how they do it. To promote routine assessment of patients’ QoL, we proposed several actions, such as addressing barriers to implementing patient-reported outcome measures through innovative e-health platforms.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. End-of-Life Care Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Ghent University, Brussels, Belgium

    Rose Miranda, Eveline Raemdonck, Luc Deliens & Kim Beernaert

  2. European Palliative Care Research Centre (PRC), Department of Oncology, Oslo University Hospital and Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Stein Kaasa & Tonje Lundeby

  3. Department of Supportive Care, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Camilla Zimmermann & Gary Rodin

  4. Division of Palliative Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Camilla Zimmermann

  5. Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Gary Rodin

  6. Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Lenzo Robijn

  7. Laboratory of Medical and Molecular Oncology, Oncology Research Center, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Isabelle Houbracken

Authors
  1. Rose Miranda
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  2. Eveline Raemdonck
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  3. Luc Deliens
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  4. Stein Kaasa
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  7. Lenzo Robijn
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  9. Isabelle Houbracken
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  10. Kim Beernaert
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. RM acquired the data and conducted the data analyses, which were then checked by KB. RM, ER and KB drafted and revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. All authors made substantial contribution to interpreting the data and revising the manuscript critically; have given the final approval of the manuscript to be submitted for publication; and have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eveline Raemdonck.

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Ethical approval

This research was approved by the Medical Ethical Committee of the University Hospital Brussels (BUN: 1432021000536) and performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and subsequent amendments.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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All study participants agreed to the use of their data.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Miranda, R., Raemdonck, E., Deliens, L. et al. Do cancer centres and palliative care wards routinely measure patients’ quality of life? An international cross-sectional survey study. Support Care Cancer 31, 499 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-023-07964-4

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