Engaging patients to develop a patient-reported outcome measure for the emergency department

• Published in: Canadian Medical Association journal (CMAJ) Vol. 190; no. Suppl; pp. S50 - S52
• Main Authors: Vaillancourt, Samuel, MD MPH, Beaton, Dorcas, PhD, Maybee, Alies, BA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Canada CMA Impact, Inc 07.11.2018; Joule Inc
• Subjects: Canada; Clinical outcomes; Emergency medical care; Emergency Service, Hospital - standards; Hospitals; Humans; Internal Medicine; Patient Participation - methods; Patient Reported Outcome Measures; Patient satisfaction; Questionnaires; Rheumatology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Validity; Canada
• ISSN: 0820-3946; 1488-2329
• DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.180353

Emergency departments are a major point of access to timely care for Canadians, and yet little is known on the outcome of the care provided. Patients' perspectives on the outcomes of their care could provide an untapped source of information for improvement. Past attempts at questionnaires for patients seen in the emergency department have focused on the experience or satisfaction with the process of receiving care and have had limited impact on quality improvement. Since the ultimate purpose of medical care is to improve health outcomes, many questionnaires have been developed for a range of conditions to gather this information reliably from patients' perspectives; these questionnaires are called patient-reported outcome measures (PROM). No such tool exists to gather the perspectives of patients seen in the emergency department on outcomes after they go home. Here, Vaillancourt et al develop and validate a PROM to measure outcomes of importance to patients seen in the emergency department in the days after they are discharged home.