title: Patient reported outcome measures of quality of end-of-life care: A systematic review.
abstract: End-of-life (EoL) care1is increasingly used as a generic term in preference to palliative care or terminal care, particularly with reference to individuals with chronic disease, who are resident in community and long-term care (LTC) settings. This review evaluates studies based on patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) of quality of EoL care across all health-care settings. From 1041 citations, 12 studies were extracted by searches conducted in EBSCO, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane, Open Grey and Google Scholar databases. At present, the evidence base for EoL care is founded on cancer care. This review highlights the paucity of studies that evaluate quality of EoL care for patients with chronic disease outside the established cancer-acute care paradigm, particularly in LTC. This review highlights the absence of any PROMs for the estimated 60% of patients in LTC with cognitive impairment. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are critical to understanding how EoL care services and practices affect patients' health and EoL experience. PROMs describe the quality of care from the patient's perspective and add balance to existing clinical or proxy-derived knowledge on the quality of care and services provided.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation, University College Cork, Western Road, Cork, Ireland. Electronic address: tarakearns@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Tara
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kearns
authors.affiliation: Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation, University College Cork, Western Road, Cork, Ireland; School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork, Western Road, Cork, Ireland.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Cornally
authors.affiliation: Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation, University College Cork, Western Road, Cork, Ireland.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Molloy
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000592:standards*; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000592:standards*; D000071066:Patient Reported Outcome Measures; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000592:standards*
keywords: Chronic disease; Cognitive impairment; End-of-life care; Long-term care; Patient-reported outcome measures; Patient-reported outcomes