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CAPC Palliative Care Discussion Forum
Data Collection and Measurement

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Author: Mwitkop
Date: Oct 8, 2007 2:09 pm
I am looking for a tool (survey) to be used in a clinic setting for oncology pts to determine unmet needs for symptom management and the need for future palliative care. Does anyone have anything like this available?
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Re:Forms (by jbcassel on 10/12/2007)
Any standard symptom assessment tool should work well or could be modified to work well in an oncology clinic. Links to such tools can be found at http://www.capc.org/tools-for-palliative-care-programs/clinical-tools

In addition to symptom burden, you could assess whether patients have unmet needs in terms of understanding their progonsis, making decisions about treatments, and the like. Most lay people have not heard of or understand "palliative care" (a newspaper article here in Richmond VA last year called it 'palette of care', which isn't necessarily a bad misnomer), so I would avoid asking them directly if they would be interested in that. However you could ask nurses and physicians in the oncology clinic whether they would want help in managing refractory pain, dyspnea, nausea and the like, or talking with patients and families about prognosis and decision-making. This would get at the question of whether you would get referrals from providers, in addition to whether there are unmet patient/family needs. Let me know what you think.
Brian Cassel,
Senior Analyst,
Thomas Palliative Care Program,
VCU Massey Cancer Center,
A Palliative Care (or palette of care) Leadership Center
+ Re:Forms (by laderuvo on 11/08/2007)
Hi, You may want to take a look at the Hospice Quality of Life Index (HQLI) McMillan-Weitzner, 1998 and the Missoula-Vitas Quality of Life Index (MVQOLI) Byok-Merriman, 1998. Best of Luck!

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